Inertia of Rest

What's in a name?

2012-01-29T06:36:00.001-05:00

Author's Note: Those who have read The Namesake can skip this post. Or, while they're here, they can choose to read it.

Clearly, William Shakespeare never met a Bengali in his life. On second thought, it would have been pretty alarming to see a portly Bengali gentleman walking down the street in sixteenth century Stratford-upon-Avon, wearing a starched dhuti and bullet-proof glasses in thick black frames, unruly hair turned into a neat side-parting with copious amounts of hair-oil and mother's love, huge umbrella tucked under an arm, complaining about the English weather. Anyway, had Shakespeare managed to see the multitude of intricacies involved in selecting Bengali names then he most certainly would not have asked his famous question.
Most cultures on the planet have the parents look at the baby when it's born, count it's fingers and toes, thank their deity (or not, atheists not to be offended) and then select a name, which takes all of an hour. The pool of names has all of five names: the most popular saints/kings for boys and the most popular flowers for girls. In the rare case that the name chosen contains more than a syllable, a nickname is chosen which consists of shortening the name into a single syllable. There. Now on to more important things like choosing the right diapers and saving for your child's college education. No self-respecting Bengali would ever subscribe to a system as easy as this. After all, we are a people that democratically elected a Communist government into power. And re-elected them. With thumping majorities. Six more times. Clearly, we like making life tough for ourselves.

Every Bengali in this world has at least two names. The "bhalo naam" (literal translation: good name), the name written on one's certificates, diplomas and the most important family document of them all, the wedding invitation. This is also the name one carries for approximately five minutes into a new social setting after which people revert to the other name: the "daak naam" (literal translation: calling name). This roughly corresponds to the western notion of a nickname, although the scope and the social importance of the former is much higher.

Unlike the practice detailed above, the process of finding a bhalo naam begins well before a child is born, in fact it begins almost as soon as conception is confirmed. A round-table conference is convened in which all the well-read members and the family heads of the extended families of both the parents are invited. Most of them attend (unless they have a tiff with the matriarch of this section of the family). Once pleasantries and gossip are exchanged, the members comb through their brains and the works of Sarat Chandra, Bankim Chandra and the immortal Gurudeb to come up with suitable candidates. The candidates are evaluated in a complex system of grading, which takes into account the obscurity, complexity in word structure, ambiguity in meaning, difficulty in pronunciation, number of syllables and so on. Finally, after hours of deliberation and multiple cups of tea, a 'winner' is chosen. This process is repeated for the opposite sex. The two names are communicated by the matriarch to the unsuspecting child's parents. Bengali people generally do not have middle names, apart from the occasional (and now dated) 'Chandra'. This ritual, although tried and tested through the ages, often buckles under the whims and egos of the various stakeholders involved. For instance, I was first assigned a name chosen by my rather well-read maternal grandfather, but was ultimately given a name which came to my paternal grandmother in a dream after I was born. As evident from the process, our names are incredibly diverse, and very easy to butcher by anyone not extremely well-versed in the nuances of Bengali pronunciation, and our fondness for the 'o' and 'sh' sounds.

Contrary to the rigor and formality of the bhalo naam, the daak naam is neither unique nor is there a well-defined process of selecting it. While a carefully chosen bhalo naam can be used as a weapon to fluster people in formal settings by getting them to pronounce it fully and correctly, a daak naam is usually chosen to cause maximum embarrassment to its owner. Apart from rare cases, it bears no relation whatsoever to the bhalo naam or even the physical characteristics of the owner. Another difference is that, for the incredible diversity that we have in our formal names, there are probably twenty or so nicknames that every Bengali child has. For instance, most boys are usually called by some variation of baba, shona, khoka or other terms of endearment. Also, multiple people have multiple forms of address for the same person. Family dynamics make this situation especially delicate. For instance, my brother has three different daak naams (one used by my parents and immediate family, one by my father's extended family and one by my mother's). I have a nightmare composing my yearly Shubho Nobo Borsho (Bengali New Year greetings) and Shubho Bijoya (Durga Puja greetings) emails when I press enter after writing 'From'. On various occasions I have used merely my bhalo naam, on other occasions I have written all my various names separated by slashes.

Apart from these, one also acquires various names all throughout the places they go through. Due to the rather curious circumstances of my naming, I was blessed with one of the most common Indian name in existence. As a result, I was called by various corruptions of my surname throughout school and college. My personal favourite of all my acquired nicknames was 'Bong', which my college roommate used to call me in our final year and a half at college, and that was an in-joke that could easily be explained off as the famous corruption of Bengali.

When the zombie apocalypse happens, I would be waiting near Shakespeare's grave with a copy of this post and get him to redact his famous and oft-quoted question. To bolster my claim, I would have Mithun Chakraborty, the greatest Bengali of all time, accompany me.

On Spontaneity

2011-12-20T02:08:00.000-05:00

I have been meaning to write this post for several days (yes, I see the irony in the dichotomy between the post title and it's first few words), in fact, ever since I wrote this. This past semester, through external guidance and some thorough internal introspection, I have managed to uncover the capricious me. Hear me out. It is this me that procrastinates, that refuses to read research papers until an hour before advisor meetings, that makes me question my commitment to my work and my life. But why?
It is human nature to be spontaneous. "The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry." That is more often than not due to internal stimuli, rather than external circumstance. Think about it, when was the last time you did something on a whim? Took a trip unplanned? Took a fancy literature course instead of the more pragmatic economics one just because you fancied it? Asked someone out in a coffee shop, because you wanted to?
The thing about being a little whimsy is that every fibre of your being knows that you are doing this because you want to do this. Right now. More than anything else. You are focused, every ounce of you delivering its best performance, just because you want to. Better than months of focus, better than years of rationalizing your next action. Surprising how it all works out. And if it didn't, well, it was never meant to be. And you leave with the satisfaction of chasing something you wanted. And giving your bloody best at it, while you're at it.
So go. Take that trip to Timbuktu you've always dreamed of taking. Put a smile on that someone's face you've been putting off all this while. Stop over-thinking. Start doing. Or, as a friend puts it, think less, do more, be random.
Getting to know the capricious me was tremendous fun. Now that I have learnt to listen to this me, I have become more grounded. I work because I'm having fun doing it, not because my advisor/parents/internal policeman would be disappointed if I don't. I take breaks from work because I have fun doing that, not to rebel against this enforced structure.
I close this blog-post and this year with this picture I clicked in New Orleans:

The good times roll indeed. The good times roll...

Jol khabe?

2011-11-18T20:21:00.001-05:00

Preamble/Disclaimer: Despite the sometimes condescending tone below, I am immensely proud of my Bengali heritage. This post simply attempts to give a more accurate picture of the limbo-people, the displaced (probashi) Bengalis, who are considered only slightly less worse than the boorish 'Hindustanis' by their cousins from Cal, and who are considered only slightly less worse than the portly bespectacled 'Bongalis' by their friends/classmates/co-workers.

To my super authentic 100% pure Bengali brethren, a displaced Bengali:

is unaware of the inside Bankura/Mednipur/Bally jokes.
does not think that Kolkata is at the centre of the universe.
cannot name each and every kind of fish found in the Hooghly.
knows much more about Sherlock Holmes than Professor Shonku or Feluda.
likes Chacha Chowdhary more than Handa-Bhonda and Batul the Great.
has never taken Bengali at school and so deserves a little leeway when it comes to Bengali grammar and vocabulary.
has celebrated authentic Poojo, complete with Bengali plays and song-and-dance performances, with other Bengalis. Outside Bengal.
did not devote years reading and discussing Marxist ideologies.
can live without having aaloo posto every other day.

To the rest of India, a displaced Bengali:

is not a valid target of fish jokes, or roshogolla jokes.
can love chicken more than fish.
has never lived inside Bengal, and does not go to 'Kalkatta' for his summer vacation.
does not think Sourav Ganguly is God. Sachin obviously is.
can speak other languages without confusing genders or sounding like he has two roshogollas stuffed in his mouth.
does not eat water.
has heard as much Robindro Shongeet as you have, or slightly more (cannot escape it during Durga Puja).
is not a catalog of sweets.

We know we don't fit anywhere. We don't ask for acceptance. We are the shadow people. We only ask for understanding. So the next time you assume all Bengalis have fish for breakfast, spare a thought for us. And when you haughtily look down upon people reading a translated copy of Geetanjali, spare a thought for us.

The Indian Dream

2011-11-02T03:38:00.000-04:00

The Indian Dream is simple. There is a four-fold objective: rigid adherence to the existing social structure, financial security, 'settling down' in marital union and transfer of values to the next generation. Here is a list of do's and don'ts that explain this much better:

DOs:

Study/work hard
Strive for better. Always
Respect elders and seniors
Marry according to your family's wishes
Buy real estate as soon as you can afford it

DON'Ts:

Be satisfied with what you have
Rest on your laurels
Engage in vices: alcohol, smoke and sex
Flaunt money or success
Forget your roots and culture

We are loth to take risks to a fault. The weight of expectations and 'responsibilities' makes us go through the dance of school, college, job, marriage, kids, in that order, without a break. By the time we're thirty, we're supposed to have ticked all these boxes and be instilling this same system of 'values' and 'tradition' to our offspring. Thirty! I have seen thirty-year-olds start grad school in the United States. They have no clue of any permanence in their lives. And yet, they have the same zeal and youthfulness that a fresh college grad has in India. They have seen more of the world, have had much greater experience of life and have a much clearer idea of what they want in life.

One argues that the opulence of the west allows them to be carefree about their lives. I often hear "उनको रोटी की चिंता नहीं है इसलिए ज़िन्दगी जैसी मर्ज़ी जी सकते है,"(translation: they don't have to worry about their next meal, so they can live life as they want to) and it's many variants from my parents and their peers. While that is true, it is also true that my father has earned enough to have let me experiment more with my life. Take a gap year before/during/after college, not taking science in high school and so on. While I eventually ended up doing something I want to (that is, stare at ceilings and sleep in classrooms for more years than I can count), a lot of my peers from similarly 'affluent' backgrounds are in a generic IT job back home. One of them was a guitarist, another was a brilliant footballer, one ranks among the best writers I have ever read and I'm pretty sure that one of them could have made a career out of stand-up comedy. They do what they do just to have a steady income, forsaking their talents, dreams and aspirations for security, for mediocrity. And even though I am at a place I want to be at right now, I wish I had a much more exciting journey here.

The thing is I cannot blame my parents for planting this 'dream' into me. This pursuit of the path most traveled has been reinforced into me from all directions, relentlessly. From the fable of the ant and the grasshopper and the tortoise and the hare, to weekend appointments with the television and bhagwaan Ram. The tale of the Titanic was read as a warning against over-reaching ambition. Even Duck Tales was spun as the tale of a self-made duck trying his hardest to earn more and protect his existing wealth. We had the highly conformist "Hum aapke hain koun" being the highest grossing movie in eons. The romantic dramas of our childhood portrayed the life every middle class kid dreamed of and fetishized it. Foreign-returned hero serenades rich land-owner's daughter heroine. Sounds familiar? My teachers, my school prayers and my recess games emphasized humility and strict adherence to social structure. I went to college and was ragged mercilessly. To enforce the values of discipline and deference to seniors, they said.

I realize that society is changing. Certain aspects of the Indian Dream I described above are being challenged. But the basic core, that wish for financial and emotional security is still intact and thriving. While one might be allowed to choose their life partner on their own, they still need to do it in a certain time-frame. While one may pursue alternate careers (and even go to Grad School), one still has to show that they have a healthy inflow of income. While the divisions of caste and other hierarchical social structures are swiftly blurring, there remains an undercurrent of resentment and mistrust among people from different social strata.

I see and read about people debating equal marriage rights and the legitimacy of war in this side of the world. I wonder what discussion, if any, this would generate in a middle-class Kanpur household.

Alter Egos

2011-10-10T23:53:00.002-04:00

I...
Have an alter ego that is a superhero
Complete with a cape
And underwear on the wrong way

And then there is one
Who is a conqueror
Ruler of the world
A new-age Caesar

A sportsman alter ego
A prodigy, an unbridled genius
The epitome of athleticism

There is even one
Who studies a bit
I think he is the one
Who'll earn me my bread

I have a hippie inside
All he wants to do is leave
Be in a different place each day
Leave and never come back

But I wish
I had an alter ego
That would not hurt you
The way I do

Of the The Angel, The Baby and The Winker - II

2011-09-11T17:00:00.002-04:00

A few days back, I was stalking my favourite football players' twitter feeds. We have poor Cesc Fabregas posting the same tweet in three languages to appease his highly fractured fanbase and Wayne Rooney brutalizing the English language in a way not quite unlike the way he treats linesmen who dare to give decisions against him. There is Ronaldo, whose feed is more bland than American food, and Nani who is a poor man's Ronaldo even on twitter. Phil Neville shows how lonely he is by responding to each and every question anyone asks him, and there's his namesake Phil Jones, who only uses his feed to talk to his girlfriend.
Anyhow, I made an observation which ties in nicely with this post about the last three men to win the Ballon D'Or. Reading that post again, I see just how red-tinted my glasses are. I still maintain what I said in that post though.

Kaka: Switches between English, Spanish and Portuguese in his posts. Follows 326 people. Actually expresses genuine emotions. The paragon of humility and unpretentiousness.
Lionel Messi: Does not have a twitter account. Judging by his interviews, the world is better off without having to read his thoughts. Couldn't be bothered or too focused on pitch to have a life outside it.
Cristiano Ronaldo: Posts only in English. Follows 51 people, out of which one is an account for his fans. By all appearances, has hired someone to write his feed for him.

Oh, and this post cannot be complete without mentioning that 'Ronaldo lite' Nani follows 15 people, also posts in English only and tries to be as aloof and douchey as the original, but does not quite pull it off.

PS: Stalking footballers on twitter and reading posts I wrote on this blog more than three years ago. Sigh. I remember I used to have a life once.

I wish I clicked more pictures

2011-06-27T00:34:00.003-04:00

I wish I had a picture of my delight at his birth. But I was too small to go near the camera then.
I wish I had a picture of the night we jammed to Knockin' on Heaven's Door. She was singing the Bob Dylan version and I insisted on ruining it with the Axl Rose one.
I wish I had a picture of the night spent on the DMS roof, under the stars. Three guys, no words. I wish we had shared a little more words.
I wish I had a picture of the two of us before he got involved in poltu, made other friends and we drifted apart.
I wish I had a picture of the first time we hugged and the first thing I noticed was the smell of her shampoo. But then, I would've had to ask a stranger on the street to click it, and anyway, the hug was pretty spontaneous.
I wish I had a picture of the bike accident. All of us may be scattered all over the globe, and may not be talking to each other, but we did not know that then.
I wish I had a picture of our first kiss. But then, I don't carry a tripod and a camera to my third date.
I wish I had a picture of that time at the school play when she took small breaks from her group to meet me.
I wish I had a picture of our little gang in the colony park in Jorhat. When the biggest fear in life was falling off the swing.

At some moments you feel you have a picture that'll last in your mind forever. What you don't realize is that those pictures fade pretty fast. And soon you have bits and pieces, and struggle to paint the rest in your mind's canvas. I wish I had a more permanent way to preserve those pictures.

(Another) Year in Reflection

2011-05-09T01:55:00.007-04:00

Over the past few days, I found myself summarizing stuff; you know, like when an incident happens and you go, "I learnt something today." I have rarely been so contemplative and content for this amount of time. Life is meandering, and whenever someone asks the perfunctory, "What's up?" I do not feel the usual insincerity washing over me when I reply, "Everything's going smooth."
And then I realize, well, why not bore the few readers that I have with these little nuggets of observations and realizations I made about the past year, or so, in this Zen-like state of mine.

Research is a funny little beast. It is agonizing and very tantalizing for the most part. But the smallest results make you really really happy. The mood swings are very astonishing. As is watching your advisor getting happy with the result you just hit upon, as happy as a little kid getting candy. However, I also realized that people in my building were not so understanding about my celebratory jig. Their "this guy is crazy" stares and shrugs told me that loud and clear.
I am no where near the level of awesome I thought I was in primary school. In fact, barring a few spikes, life has been steadily cutting me down to size ever since. Realizing this, however, has been therapeutic.
I understood really well the difference between getting drunk and getting wasted. That line is dangerously thin.
I understood the value of people. A lot. A lot of bullet points in this list are on this theme.
I am a huge nerd. Huger than I'd thought before. And that makes me a little glad.
I am pretty obsessive-compulsive about lists and enumeration. (And I totally went meta there!) In fact, I abuse the 'shift+enter' combo while chatting to present a whole list of thoughts. I do that a lot.
I'm lazy and procrastinate a lot. (This post is being written to distract myself from work. Talk of being meta! Again!) To the extent that I keep questioning my commitment.
All my life, I've built up a lot of people because they've bothered to play hard-to-get. That is a huge problem with me. You stay away, I fawn and obsess about you. You care and come close to me, I start getting distant. This has been a really really tough realization and has made me hate myself. For being unfair to a lot of people, including myself.
A lot of beautiful relationships do not have a name. At least I hope so. I love that particular bit of my life right now. The anticipation, the sweet nothings, the longing, the banter, the getting to know another person and feeling a deep connection. All this minus the constriction, the assertion, the ego, the sniping and the constant obsession. If I screw this up again, I will stab myself in the eye.
There are some people who reach into the person you were seven years ago and bring that person back out of you. Especially when you re-connect with them after seven years. Sometimes, however, you realize that seven-year-ago you was a lot cooler.
My high-school friends and I have drifted to completely different places in life. And although the "we will not let the future affect our dynamic" pinky swears are really sweet, the distance, inevitably, affects the dynamic. I wish life were more like a sitcom where these phone conversations I have with my high-school buddy would be an episode where I revert into my adolescent self.
I love the climbing wall. I wish I could get married to it. Climbing is really challenging and completely different than any physical activity I've ever tried. And different in a good sense.
However, as with any physical activity, I am decidedly in the melt-into-the-crowd-average section for climbing too.
I like being independent. I like it when adults, sometimes my parents, ask for my opinion. I guess being a grown-up isn't that bad.
That said, my craving of watching cartoons and sports on T.V. has only increased. And I often get juvenile (which I like to pronounce 'yoovenile') ideas and thoughts in my head, which makes me chuckle a bit privately. You know, "that's what she said" jokes, stick figure humor and the likes.
I have felt really lonely at times. Soul-crushing, immensely depressing loneliness.
I have some really quirky lab-mates. Thankfully, a lot of their quirks resonate with mine.

For now, that's all folks. I have a really exciting trip to India to look forward to. And although one of the few readers of this post is going to be future me, I hope he is smiling in the same way as I was when I read the post chronicling my first year in undergrad five minutes ago.

We, The People

2011-04-08T01:48:00.003-04:00

Over the past couple of years, my disillusionment with the concept of India had reached it's nadir. From a fervent nationalist optimistic about the nation's future, trusting the will of the people to triumph over the multitude of problems, I had turned into a pessimistic and cynical observer, silent as the land of my birth continued to suffer under the burden of my inactivity. To give concreteness to my thoughts, I found refuge in the ideas of fierce anti-nationalism, anarchism, local communes and so on. In fact, my facebook profile has proclaimed my political views as being 'anarchist' for quite some time now. I wrote some of my feelings against the construct of nations, championing the cause of the individual over the bureaucracy and the crass corruption that societal structure has shown me over time.
I flew across oceans, caught glimpses of the first world. I escaped the clutches of the negativism into the welcoming arms of the land of opportunity. My contact with my country at large was limited to occasional glimpses of news portals and a few words here and there in phone calls. The silent observer had become the detached and mute spectator. Meanwhile, scam after scam rocked the nation. The newly invented symbol for the rupee was increasingly being seen alongside the mind-boggling amounts of money our leaders swindled out of us. A large portion of the country remained firmly entrenched in civil war. The hopeless observer became the detached spectator. Detached, and mute.

A couple of events churned my thoughts and forced me to reconsider my identity.

The first is the much storied success of our cricket team in the recently concluded World Cup. My disillusionment with the sport of our masses had started pretty much after the 2007 World Cup. It might have had a huge role in my growing discontent with the national identity at large. All that remained was for God (read Sachin Tendulkar) to retire and then I could peacefully stop watching the sport for good. However, this World Cup and the fairytale run of our team put a smile even on this face. More than that, the simultaneous outpouring of celebratory passion all across the length and breadth of the nation gave me immense and unexpected joy. I cannot dream of any event (maybe Independence?) that has evoked such celebration in my country. Something inside me changed that day. Some of the dazzling light from the trophy and the fireworks entered through a chink in my heart.
The second and the bigger event is Anna Hazare's ongoing fast unto death. The impeccable track record, the lofty ambition, the steely will, the boundless optimism, the inspiring stand; truly, a great among men, if there ever was one. And most heartening of all, the enthusiastic support. The facebook groups, the twitter posts, the mass-mobilization of college campuses, massive demonstrations in support all across the nation. A people united in their activism. A people tired of watching and suffering. A people desiring change. A people, my people, my countrymen. If this does not make me proud of my India, if this does not make me love my compatriots, I don't have a beating heart.

Thankfully, my heart still beats.

Conversation

2011-03-29T20:51:00.004-04:00

If I tell you that self-destruction is the only liberation,
If I tell you hedonism is the only road,
If I tell you nihilism is the only bible,
And the void is God.
If I tell you that you are my only redemption,
Your wholesomeness the only shining light,
If I tell you to let me go,
To darkness, to immolation.
Am I a saint, a martyr,
A prophet, or a lunatic?

Happy Valentine's and all that jazz

2011-02-15T01:14:00.005-05:00

Woke up near noon. Had noodles with turkey for breakfast. Played with niece for some time. Thought maybe she does not like me as much as I had hoped. Moped around a bit. Had lunch. Rejected Jhumididi's generous offer to take some food back. Bath. Packed up. Didi realized it's late and we set off for the airport. Realized ten minutes later that I've left my laptop adapter at her house. Drove back, took it. Lost twenty minutes. Got stuck in after-school traffic. Cursed my luck while watching a succession of green lights turning red in the nick of time. Cursed self for forgetting stuff. Was irritated with didi for not driving on the interstate and going through the crowded university area. Cursed self for taking out irritation with my own tardiness on her. Reached late at the airport. Missed the check-in window. Saw my plane leave from the window of the airport. Shelled fifty bucks to book a place on the next one. Informed house-mates that I won't be able to cook tonight. Spent an hour and a half on the plane with no one on the next seat. Laughed inwardly at the poetic justice of it. Landed in Atlanta. Took the metro back. Got really spooked when a cross-dresser sat next to me for more than half the journey. On the walk back from the station to my house, I stopped to appreciate the city lights in the night sky. A girl hollered at me from a car waiting at a traffic intersection, "Hey! Where are all the clubs?" "You left them back there," I yelled back, pointing in some general direction. Another girl stuck out her head and called, "Come join us in the car!" The light changed and they sped away. Bemused, I reached home. My new credit card was waiting. Had egg-maggi for dinner. Will soon sleep, as I did last night: on a single bed, alone.
Happy Valentine's to all.

The 'I Love You' Protocol

2011-02-05T18:06:00.009-05:00

There's a lot of social phenomena one can deduce by observing Facebook activity of people. The obvious gender disparity in comments and likes is already the stuff of legend. I more recently observed the prevalence of different varieties of 'I love you's being said on Facebook. Girls saying it to their best friends, girls saying it to their long lost friends, girls saying it to friends whom they used to bitch about in school, even girls saying it to guy friends. Often, long sequences of comments ensue where two girls keep saying a thousand different varieties of 'I love you' back and forth. If you're especially unlucky, you get to see gross abuse of vowels and lots of words supposed to simulate kissing sounds. It is as if my news feed is one giant lesbian-fest. The pinkness and the sickly-sweetness of it all forced me to come up with this: rules of when and how to say 'I Love You' to your friends. And just to make it easier, I made a flowchart out of it. Fan-mail in the comments section please.

Click on the picture to enlarge.

In a Line Together

2011-01-10T04:34:00.003-05:00

Author's note: Fictional, inspired from real life events.

There was once a guy. An average guy. In a universe where Salman Khan would be named Bare Torso, Aamir Khan would be named Perfectionist, Carlos Tevez would be named Scummy Judas and Sachin Tendulkar would be named God (you get the drift), our hero would be named Loser. Cute and simple.
So Loser's walking in the airport one fine day. After an exhausting journey (with Loser not managing to get aisle seats to stretch his cramped legs), all he wants is to get home and sleep. Because, you see, Loser loved to sleep. If he could sleep 22 hours a day, he would. Ahh, but there are 24 hours in a day, you say. But you see, he knows that if you sleep 24 hours a day, you're dead. His mother told him that when Loser was a little boy and wanted to sleep 24 hours everyday. Anyway, I digress. And Loser hates it when I digress while narrating one of his stories.
So Loser is in the immigration line. He puts his documents in order, slips his headphones over his ears, and patiently waits for his turn to arrive. He is brought back to Earth (you see, he has the not too uncommon habit of spacing out) by a pair of eyes looking at him. "Long line, huh?" the pair of eyes say to him. Loser, totally unnerved, takes a step back and looks at the gorgeous chick who just made casual conversation with him. "A girl, just asking me a random question? There is something unnatural going on here," he thinks. "Uh, yeah, the last thing I need after a 22 hour journey," he manages to blurt out with a weak smile on his face. And then, for the first time ever, he slips seamlessly into a natural conversation with a total female stranger. He manages to find out that she's a student of criminal law ("Me? I'm just studying Computer Science") from France ("That explains the accent!") and it's her first time in this country. Unfortunately, he also finds out that she's merely transiting here and would go to another city. She's a bit apprehensive about the whole new culture thing, so Loser, perfect ambassador that he is, explains her everything that she needs to know (or, everything that he knows) about this airport and this new country. They walk, together, to collect their baggage, and then finally, they come to the sign which would direct transit travelers to a different direction.
Heartbroken, Loser starts to walk away. But in a brainwave, he manages to turn back and ask for her number. She replies that she doesn't have a local number yet. But then, she suggests (Yes! She suggests!) that they could keep touch on Facebook. Loser asks her to write her name for him. She writes, 'I'm-Not-Available'. "Odd name," Loser thinks. He bids goodbye to I'm-Not and goes on to his house. His heart has skipped several beats.
Throughout the short journey back to his house, Loser keeps fantasizing about I'm-Not. He's thought about visiting her sometime this semester, maybe take a trip to Europe together in the summer.
On his computer, Loser manages to stop drooling over I'm-Not's profile picture long enough to send her a friend request.
The next day, he logs back in to see that she has accepted his friend request! And then he sees that I'm-Not is in a relationship.
With a girl.

That explains the names in the story then.

To-do List for the next few days

2010-12-16T22:36:00.005-05:00

1) Eat payesh. Lots of it.
2) Hug mum. I've never ever missed you more.
3) Watch the look of delight on my brother's face when he sees what I have for him.
4) Take my two-wheeler for a spin. Give my little cousin sister a ride on it.
5) Fill up my 1.5 TB hard-drive.
6) Try to convert my little cousin brother to a Man United fan (he supports Chelsea at the moment! The shame!).
7) College buddies reunion! The lazy gang will party till we drop. And then we'll party some more!
8) Eat chicken, Indian ishtyle. Kababs, tandoori, plain old chicken curry...
9) Eat some more payesh.
10) Pester my mum's mum to make potol dorma and enjoy it.
11) Watch my little big cousin sis, who just got married to the love of her life, smile away to oblivion.
12) Gossip! With all my cousin sisters!
13) Play with my little cousins and my nephews and niece.
14) Meet an old friend. Maybe two.
15) Watch premier league on the big-screen TV at my house!
16) Stay as far away from the kitchen as I can.
17) Stay as far away from a computer as I can.
18) Eat some more payesh.
19) Try to smuggle a bucketful of payesh to Atlanta.

Say Yes to Fire-crackers!

2010-11-05T02:16:00.004-04:00

One of the reasons I loved my childhood was because things were uncomplicated then. Consumerism, information explosion and easy access to communication and computer technology have created a lot of issues. One may say that they have created more problems than they have solved. As we observe and ape what our privileged cousins in the first world are doing, we become more 'socially aware', we come out of our cocoons and become alert and responsible citizens. In this era of moral righteousness and political correctness, when protest marches, candlelight vigils and Gay Pride parades become more and more commonplace, especially in urban India, it is suddenly unfashionable to be an average Joe minding your own business. If you don't espouse the cause of the day, you're an insensitive selfish wretch. The cause for this particular day is the 'say no to firecrackers this Diwali' campaign. This is a yearly phenomenon, in which young children pose for photo-journalists, with cute home-made posters, complete with glitter and florescent orange markers, saying thousand different variants of, "Save our environment with a cracker free Diwali!"
In a sentence, I do not subscribe to this development. I do not like it when misguided people, in a frenzy driven by media outlets, become pseudo-environmentalists on Diwali. I do not like it when people, who do not know the first thing about either the decibel scale or nitrites, deprive little children from some pure unadulterated fun. And I certainly don't like it when they look down upon me as a neanderthal because I differ from their stand. "But Times of India says it's bad!", they say. To them, I say that the Times of India has slowly but surely descended into a rag, as have most Indian media outlets. The Times of India has dedicated more column space to spicing up your sex life, identifying the inner diva in you or Rakhi Sawant's latest self-obsessed quote than to Naxal violence or human-rights violations in the North-East. But I digress.
I love bursting fireworks. I love the sights and the sounds emitted by them. I love the multicoloured sparks and the whistles and bangs that characterize Diwali. Ever since I was a kid, I couldn't wait when my mum would finish lighting diyas around the house and finish the puja, so that I could go out and compete in the "best bomb in the building" contest. I loved being the daredevil and was indulging in 'air-blasting' behind my parents' backs since I was 10. I loved being close enough to the bomb when it burst that there used to be a tingle in the ear after.
The people who cry about air and noise pollution on that one day of Diwali go to office the next, being as aware of the idea of carpooling as they are of the noise being generated by their continuous honking. Yeah, my dear journalist at India TV, you generate much more smoke with your car than your kid does at Diwali. And while you're at it, why not go and report on the smoke being issued from factory chimneys using substandard (if at all) filters? Oh yes, who cares about the environment. All we truly care about is visibility and approval.
The environment be damned for the look of sparkling awe in a kid's eyes when he sees a rocket burst in an extravaganza of colours and sparks high up in the sky. The environment be damned.
Have a happy, noisy and a cracker filled Diwali!

Taking a Journey Together

2010-10-18T22:55:00.002-04:00

I think I am in love.

Her skin is smooth, velvet smooth. We share an intense chemistry. She looks at me with those hazel eyes, flicks her silky blond hair and a red seeps through her cheeks, as she blushes and averts my gaze. She is intense, beautiful and looks angelic. Whenever I look at her, the background turns a shade of peach or pink that would put a Valentines card to shame. My stomach curls into a knot, and my heart swells to three times its size.
I see her every day, sitting opposite me on the bus. That five minute bus-ride is what I live for every day. The thought of seeing her again, a beacon in my heart, keeps me going through the day. Every day, I synchronize my morning routine exactly so as to catch that very same bus, on the very same time, that day, each day.

I am keeping it on the she-doesn't-know-I-exist level as of now.

On the plus side, I can't screw things up with her!

Life, The Universe and Everything

2010-09-29T16:55:00.005-04:00

This is just a listing random (I sometimes think that if I do a word-count on this blog, this particular word might come out to be the highest, after the usual suspects - demonstrative adjectives and articles) thoughts post, a clearing of the mind exercise.

1) I've never been lazier in my life, I've never procrastinated with this much fervor before. Actually, scratch that, I bitch the exact same stuff 90% of the time.

2) I recently finished 'Y: The Last Man' after reading about it on this awesome blog I came across. I found it to be a very compelling read, and it blew my mind, especially the last few panels. A story has never had a more satisfactory closure. However, a few leaps in logic and a few minor plot holes made the experience slightly less that perfect. I would still give it a 9 and recommend it to any graphic novel enthusiast.

3) I've also started going through the archives of quite a few webcomics. And I realized that webcomics are much better when you have periodic doses rather than reading them all at once. Which is because most of the ones that I read are overly cynical and sarcastic (and, in some cases, obsessed with masturbation). Cynicism and sarcasm is a wonderful thing to have in small (or moderately medium) doses, but an excess makes the brain go into overload processing all the existential and nihilistic overtones and eventually, shut down. At which point, one can either go to sleep or act like a mentally retarded zombie (for the self-righteous activists, this wasn't a dig at mental retardation) till one goes to sleep.

4) Speaking of which, I've had some bursts of creativity in the direction of a webcomic. However, since my artwork is really crappy, my ideas haven't really seen the light of day. Also, drawing on a computer is really painful, and taking pictures of stuff on paper is too boring. Any suggestions on overcoming this particular writer's block would be quite welcome.

5) I really miss watching football matches on the hostel TV. Or on the TV in my parents' bedroom. Or on a TV. I also find watching football in the morning/early afternoon really unnerving. And I hate my classes clashing with Champions League matches. And yes, Dimitar Berbatov is a legend. And no, I am not jumping on the bandwagon.

6) I am really into movie sound tracks for quite some time.

7) There is a huge event on the horizon. However, I promised to blog about it only after it comes to pass. As planned.

8) I love computer science theory! I just love the mathematical constructions involved, and I love that no-one in theory lectures asks, "Yes, but what application does this have?" I attend at least two talks/seminars a week, on my own accord (which, I believe, signals my successful transition from an undergrad into a matka - which is pejorative IITD slang for a grad student). And I sleep off in only one of those two (on an average). And I sleep off in only those talks that I don't follow a word of. Which implies that I comprehend around half of the research talks that I attend, which is quite awesome for me.

9) I just found someone who is more anal about life than I am. This guy thinks he is a sarcastic smart-ass. I hate his pretentiousness and his patronizing style of writing. I sincerely hope I never turn into something like that.

10) I haven't read a novel for more than a month. I hate that particular fact.

11) Community is awesome. Those of you who haven't heard of it yet should definitely give it a watch.

A Day in the Life of

2010-09-06T02:21:00.003-04:00

Not for the first time in my life, I cried. I felt excruciating pain. I felt rejected, alone, and many other things besides. I felt anger, a vitriolic acidic anger that would have leached you to your bones. I felt slighted, my massive pride and ego splintered and shattered in your wake. I strove for the upper hand, I strove to be the alpha dog. The raw emotion inside me ate me away. I couldn't focus, I couldn't stay happy. The most potent drug, guaranteed to make you sail higher than the clouds, couldn't distract me. I tore at myself, I self-destructed. I wanted something, I didn't want you. What was that something I so desperately wanted?
In my topsy-turvy and twisted world, I desperately sought a solution, a release. You had deleted me much better than I could ever delete you. I cried, not for the first time in my life. The music filled my ears, hours on end. I lay in my bed, staring at the roof. My mind was empty, apart from the pain and your name. And then I blinked.
It was over. It is over. I am at peace. The world is good.
At least I hope it is.

Circles

2010-07-19T16:40:00.001-04:00

Author's note: Fictional, but inspired from real-life events.
Author's sidenote: I find the sentence above as the most ambiguous (and safest) disclaimer ever. Therefore, that is my favourite disclaimer of all.

"It is my deepest pleasure to welcome you all to Jwala..." The words emanating from a rather crowded common room attracted me, and I went in and took a chair, right at the back, inconspicuous in the crowd. The new house secy, my junior (one of the few on a first name basis with me) was giving the customary welcoming speech to the freshers, the incoming batch of '10.

"Firstly, I would like to reassure you all that our hostel is completely ragging free. Should someone harass you in any way, please come to one of the seniors listed on the board outside. Their phone numbers are there too. We will help you."
..."I am not going to the hostel today, he said he'll devour me," said the bespectacled guy as all of us looked at him, empathizing. Inward, we all gave a sigh of relief it wasn't us in his place. "I'll talk to that senior we talked to yesterday, he was one of the good guys," said the tall one. We all got back to typing our first commands on a linux terminal under the not-too-watchful gaze of the TA.
"Strip, you bastards, or none of you's returning to your room tonight!" "Now sweetie, would you like to jack your roomie off?" "Hey, how about racing these guys naked?!" I looked across the corridor to my underwear, lying on a chair. I wasn't united with it for the next two hours...

"The most important thing I would like to stress upon is this: you are here to study. The activities and distractions are many, but put your studies above everything else." I smirked and I could have sworn I saw the warden, sitting at the front, gave half a smile too.
..."Dude, screw the minors. Now go away and let me study! I haven't been to a single class this sem," said the second yearite, our guru, to his two 'favourite facchas'. It is September 2006, and we are supposed to be studying for our first minors in IITD. We clear out of his room.
It is past midnight and the two of us are sitting on the lawns in front of Bharti building, laughing cynically at the crowd making their way hurriedly on the pathway connecting the hostels to the Reading Room, concerned about the mountain of equations they'll have to remember for the exam in the morning. "Check out the ass on that chick man!" I exclaim...

"There are a lot of activities here that you can be a part of. There is ample scope for you to indulge in your talents. The representatives of various clubs would guide and assist you in this pursuit so don't hesitate in approaching any of them."
..."The house secy asked me for a suitable candidate to be the next representative. I put forth your name," said the incumbent representative. It was February, 2007, the height of that year's political season.
"We don't think you're doing a good job. We think its a time for change," said the house secy. It was September, 2007. So ended my tenure as representative and participation in that particular sphere...

"Over the past few years, most of you have given less time to sports and games than you should have, and frankly it is visible (polite laughter). Go out and rekindle the spark in the sports field! The hostel captains need fresh legs in their teams, team trials for freshers are scheduled soon."
..."So what do you do, apart from your books?" "I sing, quiz, and swim, sir." "You're getting your swimming card made and I'll see you in the pool in two days. By the way, I am the aquatics captain of this hostel. Making freshers watch porn with me is just a side-job," he smirked as Jenna Jameson screamed in ecstasy.
"Thanks a bunch, sir. I cannot say how grateful I am to you that you showed up for water-polo and kept goal on such short notice," gushed the swimming captain. "No sweat, us fourth yearites work for just the one thing. Get us something to eat! You idiots are just slacking off. In my time, the captain used to treat us after every match, and we lost much more than we won back then."...

"Last, but in no ways the least. Look around you at your mates. These guys and others you'll be sharing this hostel with, will form your family for the next few years."
..."Dude, this dope is the best. Lets listen to some Zeppelin." We were on the beach and dawn was just breaking.
"To think that my own batch mate would betray me in institute politics, set my blood on fire." Another guy explained his grudge under the influence of alcohol.
"Dude, I need to go to the hospital. Can you come with me?" We had a minor the next day and it was past midnight. "Sure, come on."
"Let's see. I am downloading Community and Two and a Half Men. You're downloading Match of the Day. And you're downloading the discography of The Who. I think I am a proxy short, can you share one with me?" Optimization of resources.
"We broke up." "... ... Wanna grab a bite to eat?" Words of comfort...

At that last part, I got up and walked out. There was a smile on my face. I stepped out of Jwala for the last time, putting my family behind me forever. Those kids I saw in the common room, they were apprehensive, anxious. They had stepped into Jwala for the first time. The circle continues.

Footnote: I could not hide behind the garb of fiction. That why I struck out my excuse at the very top.

What is love?

2010-06-19T03:47:00.000-04:00

"What is love?" I once wondered
Long and hard this question I pondered
Until I grew more and more bewildered
In many a song and many a rhyme had I heard
This question being convincingly answered
Yet in my mind, doubts still lingered

To a mathematician I put this query
He consulted all his books of theory
Tried techniques from calculus and geometry
And algebra, counting and trigonometry
Until he grew sore and weary
And abandoned this task most dreary

To an economist did I go next
And she earnestly browsed her text
Finding a Nash equilibrium left her vexed
Amongst demand and supply she was perplexed
She stopped humouring my jest
And dismissed me, like a pest

An engineer now caught my attention
He of dexterous hands and bold vision
In an instant fashioned a contraption
With balanced load and uniform tension
Countless parts and gears in motion
Yet it failed against my question

To a mystic did I finally turn
Some incense did he promptly burn
Mixed herbs, bones and incantations in an urn
Many secrets did the concoction churn
An answer, however, I could not earn
Disappointed and dejected did I return

Question formidable, answers meager
Cannot ponder any harder and longer
Yet, to know the truth I remain eager
The desire in my heart grows stronger
Can you replace me as the seeker?
Can you answer this question, fair reader?

Viva The Loser

2010-06-03T15:22:00.007-04:00

It was a bright sunny day in Assam in the middle of 1992, as sunny as it can get in Assam. He stood in a row lined up with other kids who were three or four years old, same as him. He held a spoon with an egg perched on it. His mother had told him to walk to the line twenty meters away from him with the egg intact and he would get a lozenge ("I want the owange one!"). If he got there before any other kid, he would get a racing car.
Ready! Set! Go!
Splat!
And so ended the story.

This story was long a spur to do bigger and better things in life for me. I have come to realize the value of this failure now. I now believe that God created a few people who (barring a few exceptional times) never win. At anything. Fact.
Don't despair! They say that there are just two kinds of people in a race, any race. The winner, and the rest. They, of course, mean it in an encouraging manner or as a warning (depending on their tone when speaking it). Reassuringly, however, the rest are as important to the intrigue and the entertainment of the race as the winner itself, as any structuralist worth his salt would tell you. The drama and the excitement ends if there is just the lone contestant in the competition (unless you're an F1 journalist or Bridgestone at the 2005 United States Grand Prix). More than the drama, the winner ceases to be a winner unless there is a loser with him. The bigger the winner becomes, the more comical and laughable the loser looks. Ricky Ponting's fantastic century at the World Cup final would not have been had it not been for a certain Zaheer Khan. Ronaldinho would have been just another ugly Brazilian with fancy feet had it not been for a certain David Seaman (look here). Sonia Gandhi would have been just another foreigner widow of the heir of the top political dynasty of a country (oh wait, there aren't many of those) had it not been for Mr. Advani and his Bharat Uday campaign. We see these examples strewn in front of us. And look deep down, you might have been on the second step of the podium yourself a few times in your life. Think of such a moment. Now, instead of wallowing in your own grief like a self-obsessed pig, think of the joy you gave to the person standing above you on that podium. It is only because you got 10 marks less than him that he gets that scholarship. It is because you screwed up your interview that he got that dream job. It is because you are an egoistic loser that he won the love of the most beautiful girl you'll ever see. So smile at his success.

Too much of paper and computer memory has been dedicated to the winner, the conquistador, the Caesar. I take this opportunity to salute the loser. The guy who comes, does his job, does not get any appreciation for it; in fact he gets abuse, brickbats and in certain situations, death. Dude, believe me when I say this, I understand how crap it feels.
They say that behind every successful man, there is a woman. I say, behind every successful being, is a loser. Spare a thought for him.

Note: To any self-righteous feminist still reading this blog, sorry for the gender-specific pronouns. Although, since they have mostly been used to describe failures, you can take some solace in that.

Search Algorithms Explained

2010-05-04T15:15:00.006-04:00

Nerd Alert! Brave soul, if you've reached this far after reading the title, either you're a bored computer science student or extremely bored.

Nitish, in a whirlwind and inexplicable step, decided to take Data Structures in our final semester. This, in spite of my numerous warnings, veiled and direct, that DS is NOT a course taken with the motivation of "mujhe coding seekhni hai". Four months down the line and I am enjoying his hospitality (his room has a cooler) while trying to teach him AVL trees and Dijsktra's algorithm in a desperate bid to avoid him a fail grade an extended stay here. Anyway the latter is a eureka moment that I had while I was giving him a 2 hour condensed Data Structures tutorial.

If, fair reader, you have reached this point in this post, you should know what a depth first search and a breadth first search are. Here is an algorithm for the breadth first search.

Initialise a queue Q to be empty
Add source node to Q
While (Q is non-empty) Do
Pop node v from Q
Perform visit action on v
For (every neighbour w of v) Do
If w is unvisited, push it into Q
End For
End While

So far so good. Now simply replace the word 'queue' in the above algorithm by the word 'stack'. Go on. If you were to simulate this modified program on a graph, you would find that this would correspond to an exact run of the depth first search.

On a meta level, this is tantamount to saying that the only difference between a DFS and a BFS is the difference between a stack and a queue. This also illustrates that modulo the implementation of the respective elementary data structures, the running time of the two search algorithms is the same. Such an elegant way of explaining such a lot! The associated concepts of backtracking, greediness, search levels all come free!
I was really surprised at the fact that the myriad differences in the two algorithms and the various applications they spawn is essentially this switch in the elementary data structure used. I would have much appreciated had my first-year teacher told us about this abstraction in class. He probably would have caught the attention of many more students than he usually held. Or probably not.

2010-04-20T16:50:00.000-04:00

What's the point? What's the point in anything? Nihilism, nothing. Nothing has meaning, everything is perception. Everything is relative. Man is an irrational creature, an impulsive one. There is no pattern, no habit, no inherent nature, no predictability. We are as random as our fingerprints, each unique. There are no groups, no nationalities, no possible way of categorizing us. Man is unquantifiable. I cannot be more than you, cannot be less. Since there is no quantification, there is no comparison. We are an amalgamation of our choices, a product of our thoughts. I owe nothing to anyone and no one owes me anything. I don't have a duty to anyone, not even to myself. Life is an abstract. Death is sleep. We are dust. Our actions, our thoughts, our deeds, our money, our sex, will all be dust. There is no right, no wrong. There is no judge, no morality. We just happen to be. It's all relative. Our senses deceive us, they give us false pictures. Our brain is a cheat, it draws patterns where there are none. It connects dots, forms associations. It qualifies things, quantifies them, gives them labels. It says, this is blue, this is bitter, this smells foul. It draws connotations, forms prejudices, allows us to judge. Black is dark, black is evil. Self is an abstract notion as well. Who am I? Why should I be so special to me? Why should I work for my own betterment? What is pain, what is suffering? What is agony? Nervous responses, again interpreted by that cheat of a brain. The universe is pristine and pure. Human thought has corrupted everything.

Observations from Inside a Railway Carriage

2010-03-11T08:02:00.005-05:00

There's something about rail travel that appeals to the romantic to me. There is something about the meandering, luxurious way that the train moves through swathes of countryside that captivates me. There is something about the way you can sip on a cup of coffee while looking blankly into the world through the window of a carriage as you hurtle towards your destination that warms my heart. There is something about the pinpricks of light in the distance that comfort you in the darkness you look into that is larger than life. There is something about the plethora of people and their different outlooks you come across and interact with that is overwhelming. Train tavel is as much an exercise in isolation and contemplation as it is one in human interaction. One can choose to hide behind a book or can share stories and banter with fellow passengers or indulge in a game of cards with friends or curl up and go to sleep.
I recently travelled from Delhi to Goa in the Trivandrum Rajdhani (for the pedants - Hazrat Nizamuddin, Madgaon and Thiruvananthapuram respectively) and needless to say was filled with the childlike awe and excitement that always holds me whenever I board a train. I called the window seat and spent most of the day hanging to the portal and looking at the world outside. Somehow I feel closest to my country and my people when I am looking out of a moving railway carriage. There is so much to read in the view one gets from a railway carriage! I observed that villages in western India have slanting shingle roofs compared to the universal flat roof norm in their north Indian counterparts. I saw flyovers and highways being built. I observed the rocky nature of the land in Rajasthan and the peasants' struggle to cultivate it. I saw factories and power plants working full blast. I observed the lush crops in full bloom. I saw trucks and goods trains groaning under the produce of hard labour they were transporting. I observed the village children looking wide-eyed at this uncomprehendable beast (a feeling I fully understood). The montages of images I saw, the melee of sounds I heard, the juxtaposition of the rural and the urban helped me feel the pulse of the country. And I saw that the country is moving forward, we are moving forward.
I always maintain that train travel is a heart warming experience.

Twenty One, or, Lists - Part 3

2010-01-20T15:03:00.003-05:00

Yours truly turns twenty one today. And as usual, I am introspective. So without further ado, here's a list of what some guys did when they were twenty one (for the pedants out there, you can give or take a year in some cases):

* 1963 - Micheal Jagger leaves LSE to pursue a promising musical career with The Rolling Stones. He is now known as Sir Mick Jagger, being knighted for "Services to Music".

* 1995 - Alanis Morisette wins a Grammy Award for album of the year for her album "Jagged Little Phil". This is the first among seven grammys.

* 1958 - Duncan Edwards dies in the Munich Air disaster, ending a promising football career. He was widely tipped to be the best English player of all time and a future captain of the English national team.

* 1967 - Pink Floyd's debut album "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" is released, most of the lyrics and music being credited to then frontman Syd Barrett.

* 1798 - Disquisitiones Arithmeticae is written, containing groundbreaking results in the field of number theory. Its author is Carl Friedrich Gauss, now known as one of the foremost mathematicians of all time.

* 1929 - Along with Batukeshwar Dutt, Bhagat Singh is arrested for throwing a bomb in the Indian National Assembly and distributing leaflets saying, "It takes a loud explosion to make the deaf hear." He is later executed and is now revered by more than a billion people.

* 1984 - Sergey Bubka breaks his first pole vaulting world record. He bettered his own mark 34 times and is now widely acclaimed as one of the greatest athletes of all time.

Something to think about, eh?

Lessons

2009-12-20T03:46:00.004-05:00

It has been more than three years since I arrived at this place, a dreamy, somewhat naive, very attention-seeking guy of seventeen. I had come from a small city, into a totally foreign place where friendships had already been forged and alliances had already been made. My expectations from this place were quite idealistic, I had entered this place because I loved, no, reveled in the preparation for it. I had a love of science like nothing else, and it was to meet new challenges, to learn new things that I had turned up. Somewhere in my heart, I was still that young guy of six whose eyes had grown with wonder when his teacher had demonstrated an experiment in front of him (the cardboard on the filled glass one). Somewhere in my heart, I was still that high school student, who had been overwhelmed at the universality and the simplicity of Newton's Laws, almost bursting into tears. I had expected people of a similar nature to be my new classmates, neighbours, friends and acquaintances. I had expected my degree to be a pursuit of more knowledge from sage-like people we affectionately called "profs", to learn for learning's sake.

The past three years have been a bitter pill to swallow in that respect. This place has disappointed me in a lot of ways. The infrastructure is derelict and falling apart. Although my department is indeed state-of-the-art (with new computers arriving every semester or so, the latest software freely available), other departments and labs are less so. My hostel has been falling into more anarchy and disrepair for the past three years, thanks to increasing pressure on the resources and bureaucratic inactivity. The mess food has been constant over the three years, but then, it was never worth boasting about anyway.
The deteriorating infrastructure, although not pardonable, is explainable by the increasing number of students and the lack of private funding compared to the oft-talked-about institutions abroad. What is not explainable is the attitude and the approach of the people I see around me. And that is the biggest disappointment in my eyes. When I see that the spark to learn more, that childlike curiosity has been completely extinguished in most of my fellow students; when I see that a lot of them have stopped caring for anything remotely academic, disguising their complete lack of hunger in a laid-back attitude; when I see that a lot of them have become obsessed with furthering their careers, using anything and everything as stepping stone, writing half-truths on their resume just to add star value, doing courses just because a certain profile would love that course on their CV; it is then that I despair. When I see people being measured by their grades; when I see terms like "chill course", "attendance fight", "pappi prof" being bandied about; it is then that I despair. When I see people flounder under the weight of expectations and insecurities; when I see "the best brains in the country" (TM) turned into rats; it is then that I despair.
Don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge anyone for the choices they have made in life. They have really sound reasons, in most cases, to do what they are doing and I respect their decision. In many cases, one may say most cases, that a student is pushed into engineering because it is the in thing, because it offers a more-or-less guaranteed future, because the brand name of this place supposedly elevates one in the corporate and the social ladders. In many cases, the zeal to learn is extinguished by the factories who churn out ever-increasing numbers of directionless, passionless robots year after year.
The system in this place is not too helpful either. We, as a nation, have always catered to the best among us. If you are first, you are a star, if you are not, you are a nobody. This attitude acts as a body-blow to the ego of the "average" student here, who "falls" from being the top dog in school to a nonentity in college. In this rat-race, the average Joe loses his identity and his self-esteem, being reduced to being in the peloton, to be in the shadow of the high-flier. However, life at the top is not a cakewalk either. The overachiever is more often than not isolated, envied by the other rats, and stereotyped. He sits at the top of a volatile pyramid, and spends more time looking over his shoulder than looking ahead.

There are people who buck the trend and go against the flow. There are people who are fierce individualists and believe in blazing a trail for the future to follow. There are people who don't care about the race and focus on maximizing themselves, for their own sake. These are few and far between. We don't encourage them. They are virtual outcasts. We envy them the most. And yet, we aspire to be them.

It has been a strange journey.

The Things We Say

2009-12-10T10:51:00.004-05:00

A sampling of the few things that I said in the week of Nov 29 - Dec 5:

Bloody hell - Day 1, after reading Tower's shortlist
Sir, I am not a geek. - Day 1, a consulting firm interview
(In my head)How could he have known! - Day 1, immediately after I said the above
I think consulting is the thing for me... uhh... I think that is because I like the short duration of the projects; if I stay on a single project too long (as I would be in an IT job), I would get tremendously bored... - Day 1, the consult interview continues
Although I have no idea about finance or markets, I would love to be a quant. In my limited exposure (through your wonderful ppt), I have come to understand that being an analyst involves lot of number-crunching and finding patterns among numbers. I think that is my thing - I love mathematical puzzles and combinatorics... That's combinatorics, sir... COM-BI-NA-TOR-ICS... C-O-M-B-I-N-A-T-O-R-I-C-S... counting? Pigeonhole principle? Yeah, that's right sir. - Day 1, a investment firm interview
Bloody hell - Day 2, after reading Microsoft's shortlist
Sir, I would love to be a part of a research lab. Uh yes sir, I have applied to grad schools. If both you and them give me an offer (whoopee!), I'll take yours. Honestly. Okay, if the top two in my list give me a full scholarship, I ~might~ consider their offer over yours. - Day 2, a research lab interview
Why me? - Day 2, after the outcome of the above interview
Are you sure you want to ask me this question? *rolls eyes* - Day 3, "tech" interview with a finance firm
I think working in the IT wing of a finance firm has it's advantages. Were I at an IBM or a Microsoft, I would have been just another coder with no individual identity. Here, I can actually see my code help you make money. What could be better! - Day 3, HR interview with the same firm
No, I have no interest whatsoever in research. I want to see the real world with its dirty code. Research is for loons and geeks. - Day 3, the HR interview continues
zzz - Days 4, 5...

Number 11 was my personal favourite.

The Beginning of the End

2009-12-07T13:45:00.001-05:00

It sometimes happens that the heights of one achievement raises the bar of expectations so high that what you do subsequently can never somehow measure up to that. For all of you who read the previous post might be disappointed with my subsequent work. I was, I did not publish anything for a long time, writing and deleting with aplomb. But then I realised one thing, this is not a showcase of how well I can write. This blog was meant to be an outlet for all that I wish to pen (and feel active enough to type out). So it shall be.

The flavour (I refuse to spell it as flavor, damn spellchecker) of the month in my peers' blogs (unless said peer did not sit for placements, for which I doff my hat) is to recount one's placement experience. For me, it was a roller-coaster ride, which was pretty usual: from missing application deadlines to precious sleep (that's right, I missed the deadline for applying to a few companies because I decided to take a nap) to screwing up tests because I couldn't motivate my lazy backside to code in C++ often enough, from having the placement cell guys screw up another potential opportunity to getting shown my place by the consulting firms, from getting tantalizingly close to another opportunity to staying shut in my room out of spite and moroseness (spellchecker claims this is an actual word, I have my doubts), from skipping countless meals because I had to rush from one interview to another to getting placed in a company which I clearly wasn't serious about (don't tell it to them). Que sera sera?
I was about to bring out the practiced speech ("I would like to thank my family, my friends... zzz") and the hysterical tears, but on this side of the fence, I actually feel quite the same. Relief is the overwhelming sentiment inside me, after the grueling process of interviews, tests and countless variations of "Tell me something about yourself." People around me are actually quite hysterical, probably they achieved what they were looking for. As for me, I am cooling off for now, listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd's Freebird (awesome solo, awesome lyrics)...

In some ways, I can't wait for the day when I can say to this godforsaken place: So long and thanks for all the fish.

A Confession

2009-08-24T06:48:00.002-04:00

I have a confession to make. I am addicted. To her. But I have tried to beat the habit, I honestly have, I swear! I fell in love again, gave it my all, but I came back to her once more. But even when I have received my fair share of sadness, disappointment and frustration, I kept coming back to her. After all, it is difficult to put your first love behind.

I first experienced her in class 4 or so, and I loved the experience. As the years went on, and as the childish games grew more mature, as I stayed up nights dreaming about the marvelous time we had that day, as I waited the entire day for the evening and a chance to meet her, I fell deeply and irresistibly in love. I loved her easy on the eye looks, her extremely friendly nature and her versatility. I loved how I could play with her one moment and become serious the next. Those innocent carefree days of my childhood spent in her company are some of the best days of my life.
As I entered college and my obsession with her reached peak levels, I realised she was not as perfect as I had imagined. Our relationship gradually deteriorated, she started treating me like a bitch. Constant contact had exposed me to the multitude of her problems, how she had been corrupted by the world, how she took a toll on my system, how my hours were spent fretting about her and her latest tantrum. I was in dire straits indeed when I met my second love.

It was initially a purely work relationship, I met her as part and parcel of my courses in college. But slowly and surely, I inevitably started comparing her to my first love, how she was much more brainy, how she was more robust and less prone to emotional tantrums and most importantly, how she appealed tremendously to the geek in me. Frustrated as I was with my lot in life, I decided to make the jump. I decided to bunk my first love for my second one.
It was initially smooth sailing, nay, it was paradise. I had never been happier in my entire life, we were what you would call, a made for each other couple. The geek meeting his love. She appreciated my nerdy jokes and quirks, infact, she actually fuelled those quirks and passions. She assisted me in my studies, helped me work on assignments and kept me afloat academically. The fun in the relationship was equally there, it was more mature though.
And here is where the addict in me kicked in. See, the truth is, my first love had stuck in my mind somewhere. Try as I might, I couldnt leave her memory behind. I missed the carefree fun that we used to share. I cant explain my enduring attachment to her, even after suffering tremendous heartbreak and disappointment at the tail end of our relationship, but it persisted. And this persistence acted as a poison in my new relationship. Infact, the puritan would even call me unfaithful, remembering an ex with rose tinted glasses while in a steady relationship.

Yes, this is my confession. And this is the opportune moment to apologise to my second love, I am sorry, but I dont deserve you. I deserve to be mistreated by my first love, although even she wouldnt have me now. I am a rudderless ship now, swinging between my attachment from one lass to the other. And I know I deserve it. For being stuck between the geek and the romantic.

I am sorry Linux, but you see Windows is my first love. Although I tried to make it work with you, she will always loom over me.

Note: It is amazing how fantasy mirrors reality.

A Summer of Mistry

2009-08-10T16:09:00.002-04:00

This is the first time that I am writing about an author in my blog, but I think he is totally worth it and more.

One fine afternoon, in the calm and soothing office of Nalini Mam, the bastion of sophistication and unparalleled reading taste in the madness of my college, I picked the name of Rohinton Mistry among the various Indian authors she suggested me to read. The name was buried in my brain for four months of bland coursework and scheming to avoid the attendance F grade in most of my courses, but it crept up once more when I was faced with the prospect of more than two months of interning at Bangalore. So, along with the formal office-wear and the multitude of grooming products my mother had packed, I slipped in a fresh copy of Tales from Firozsha Baag.
I think it was somewhere around the fifth short story out of eleven when my expression changed from neutrality to appreciation. And by the end of the eleventh, I was in love. The collection is set in the eponymous Parsi housing society, with each story unraveling layers of the residents' personalities and mutual relationships. At the end of the book, I found myself empathising with the characters, laughing, crying, becoming insane, observing and telling stories with them. I was sufficiently encouraged to pick A Fine Balance the weekend after I finished Tales from Firozsha Baag.
Reading A Fine Balance was as much an exercise in maturity and introspection as it was a literary journey through the lives of the four protagonists. The fate of the protagonists challenged all that I had believed in all my life, it played havoc with my composure, and left me depressed for two weeks. One particular powerful idea in the book was that the lifespan of any individual is a journey into further and utter ruin, culminating in chaos and depravity. It also portrayed the overwhelming hand of fate or providence in comparison to human hopes and ambitions. As an aside, I was repulsed by the atrocities wrought upon the lower castes by the "pure" castes. Although I was well-versed in the nature of the tortures and the subjugation, it moved me to read about it all in the context of the narrative; how the poor Dalits accept their lot, how dissidents are treated and the seeming permanence of status quo.
The powerful narrative also switched off my empathy button which enabled me to read Such a Long Journey and Family Matters with some degree of detachment. Which is good, because both the novels are quite poignant, hard-hitting and potentially disturbing. Both the novels have a lot in common; a family's struggle through the changing times, the generation gap (the first of the two novels has the eldest son qualify for and - wait for it - reject an admission into IIT and the second has the eldest stand up to his fathers' disapproval of his girlfriend; talk of striking a personal chord) and again, the wheel of fate being much larger than life and the undoing of the best laid plans.

The books have mostly left me with a collection of superlatives when it comes to describing Mistry's work. The novels rely on characterisation more than the plot to strike their point. Moreover, the plot acts as the cunning accomplice to the characterisation and makes for a forceful narrative; the more hopeful the characters, the harder their lot in life, the more meticulous the character, the more bizzare and ironic is the flaw in their plan that providence exploits. The narrative takes its time, its almost meandering, but this only accentuates the spurts of action when they actually happen, elevating them in sharp relief to the mundane and the routine. The books also introduced me to the dying Parsi community in India, beyond the stereotypic uptight old man with a funny name, an even funnier accent and a starched shirt. I was acquainted with their customs, their prayers, their social fabric, their concerns and their religious debates.

All in all, summer was a lot better with a Mistry book constantly in my bag.

Deutsche Fußball Rocks!

2009-07-28T14:32:00.005-04:00

Watching a football match on television is one of the compelling reasons which brings me to home when the club season is in progress. This being pre-season, I found myself (to my mother's extreme exasperation) watching last season's match in the German Bundesliga season, Wolfsburg beating Werder Bremen 5-1 to clinch their first league title ever. A few observations from the game and the Bundesliga in general:

1) The standard of play in that match was extremely high. The pace was really fast, the attacks were fairly incisive and the counterattacks were prompt and direct. Although the score indicates a rather one-sided match, Werder's attacks, orchestrated by a very capable Diego, had venom too; had Claudio Pizzaro put on his shooting boots, the score could have been 5-4 atleast. This was a refreshing change from the dour stalemates the Premier League (the best football league in the world TM) threw up last season. Contrast this title clincher to the boring defensive title clincher United dished against Arsenal (a match that finished 0-0).
Come to think of it, the Premier League is perhaps saved from being the most boring top football league by the tactical maestros in Italy's Serie A. The La Liga is highly entertaining, has much more goals and a higher standard of incisive, attacking football. The Premier League has been reduced to a show of pace and physicality. Save for a few encounters like Liverpool 4 - 4 Andrei Arshavin, Arsenal 4 - 4 Spurs and the second half of United 5 - 2 Spurs, the other matches have mostly been thoroughly one sided (with the other side putting ten men behind the ball) or boring hoofball stalemates.

2) The referee was outstanding. In my opinion, the more anonymous the referee is, the better he is. For the 70 odd minutes of the match that I watched, the cameras took a close-up shot of the referee once, when a player was down injured and he was motioning to the medics to tend to the said player. So accustomed am I to watching Howard Webb and his ilk hogging the limelight on "Super Sundays" that it was hard to control my instinctive gasp of "Foul!" when a player was tackled or even touched by the opposition. There were long periods of uninterrupted play which resulted in neat buildups and momentum actually helping the pressing team.

3) Wolfsburg winning the German title is as plausible as Wigan or Fulham winning the Premier League. Yet, that happened. Withstanding season long pressure from Bayern Munich (with stars like Ribery, Toni, Lucio, Klose, Podolski, Schweinsteiger, Lahm in their ranks and Jurgen Klinsmann coaching them for much of the season), Hamburg, Stuttgart and Hertha Berlin, the men in green showed that a solid team ethic and a low-key, result oriented coach in Felix Magath can indeed work wonders. Indeed their biggest star was a hitherto unheard of Bosnian, Edin Dzeko.

4) After the match got over, the crowd milled onto the pitch to celebrate with their heroes. It was a scene not too difficult to imagine in India, emotion pouring profusely. To see the geriatric supporters of the club crying as if they were babies (did I mention this was Wolfsburg's first title?) was extremely heartening and reaffirmed my belief in fairytales and the beauty of football. It is more amazing that this happened on the same continent and the same time-frame as the "Big Four", the Real Madrid spending spree and the same world that is inhabited by people like Emmanuel Adebayor and Ashley Cole.

5) Diego is one hell of a player. Juventus have got themselves a real star here.

6) Claudio Pizzaro cant shoot to save his life.

7) Apparently, the playing field is much more level in the Bundesliga. In the past decade, 5 teams have won the competition - Bayern (6 times), Borussia Dortmund, Werder, Stuttgart and of course, Wolfsburg.

I really wanted to see the trophy celebrations and revel in the joy of the Wolfsburg supporters, but my mum put her foot down firmly. To watch "Sach ka Saamna" after a beautiful spectacle of football and life, well, that is life.

Lists - Part 2

2009-07-17T07:24:00.004-04:00

Disclaimer: Okay, got this list from a random blog.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Mark an x against the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own blog.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - X
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - X
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel - X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - X
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - X
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

21 books on 100. Thats a poor number. But then, who reads Jane Austen anyways? Prehistoric girly novels (bring on the feminist brigade!).

Lists - Part 1

2009-06-14T08:45:00.003-04:00

I say this is part 1 because this is one of the many lists that I have in my life. Anyway, to cut to the chase, this is the list of a few things that I want to do before I die. And the list is not sorted according to any parameters. (x after an entry means done)

1) Set foot on all the continents of the world (including Antarctica).
2) Learn to cook properly.
3) Live in a village alone for a week with no contact with the outside world.
4) Own a Mac, any Mac.
5) Own a flat screen TV with the largest screen size possible.
6) Watch Man United play at Old Trafford.
7) Do some proper research on theology.
8) Live in atleast 5 countries other than India.
9) Meet Dave Gilmour and/or Roger Waters.
10) Spend a night in Amsterdam.
11) Spend a weekend scootering in Pondicherry. - x(-ish, spent the weekend there, didnt do much scootering though)
12) Get published in an academic journal.
13) Visit Germany during the Oktoberfest.
14) Go Bungee jumping.
15) Have a tattoo done.
16) Visit the "chaar dhaam" (Gangotri, Dwarka, Puri and Rameshwaram).
17) Meet Maria Sharapova.
18) Meet Sachin Tendulkar.
19) Hit a bicycle kick.
20) Cycle in the mountains.
21) Learn a foreign language (and use it to impress chicks).
22) Take a degree in literature.
23) Get published in a big newspaper.

I'll add more when I get more.

Last Evening

2009-05-29T08:26:00.003-04:00

There's this guy I keep bumping into in the gym, around my father's age. He's always wearing the same set of clothes, a white t-shirt, grey track pants, white sneakers, grey socks. He comes in, runs on the treadmill for exactly 15 minutes, does exactly 20 crunches, and leaves wiping his sweat on a clean white hand-towel he carries for the exclusive purpose. An impeccable man, in stark contrast to the sweaty youths huffing and puffing around him. We developed this strange sort of acquaintance, looking at each other now and then, passing a discreet smile. I used to be pleased to see him around, with his prim and proper personality. That's why when I met him in the changing room yesterday, I was shaken from head to toe. He was talking to another guy in the changing room, rather he was struggling to explain with hand movements that his tongue was chopped off completely some time back. I felt nauseous listening to his ill-formed words, his struggle to express himself, his taking out an ID just to tell his name, and most of all, his acceptance and exuberance despite his condition. I felt sick, guilty and a lot of inexplicable things besides.
On my way back, and till halfway into the night, I kept thinking, just the one word, why? I broke down, held my hands together, kneeled down, and in between my sobs, I screamed into the night, "WHY, GOD?" In the morning, I woke up changed. My belief in God stood shaken.

It is amazing how sometimes innocuous looking things impact someone so deeply. I have worked with mentally challenged people and with really poor people. Their visible plight, although invoked sympathy, never made me sick, never made me question my innermost truths. The guy is probably happy in his life, he certainly earns enough to lead a comfortable life, I find it difficult why his condition affected me so much. But then thats how things work on God's green earth.

Six Hours

2009-05-04T14:57:00.003-04:00

4:30 am: He almost has to shake the guy on the counter awake. The coffee is bland and too bitter. He comes back to his room. He is less than thrilled at figuring out Nyquist plots and mugging Mason's formula, but he has a major in less than four hours. "Bunk it," the thought is flashing in his brain like a neon sign. He opens the lid of his laptop. They smile at him from the desktop wallpaper. A picture clicked four years ago, a time when she cared that he existed. He shuts the lid. Finishes the coffee. There is a lingering perfume-like smell in the air, just like when she used to pass by... "Dude, what the fuck is a lead compensator?" His roommate's question brings him back to earth.

7:55 am: He jolts awake and peels the handout stuck to the side of his face. The exam starts in 5 minutes. He curses the Nescafe coffee and jams the Led Zeppelin T-shirt on the top of his head. Still groggy, he rushes to the bathroom, toothpaste in his hand. He notices his reflection in the mirror, a week-old stubble that completes his exam look. She would have found this cute, she used to laugh at him when he told her he had shaved for the first time, "You dont even have a proper beard yet!" her eyes used to twinkle. He splashes cold water on his face.

9:15 am: He's out in an hour. They had stared at him when he arrived 15 minutes late for the exam. They stared again when he gave his nearly empty answer booklet back to the prof, who was glaring incredously at him. "Screw 'em," the neon sign flashes in his brain again as the iPod comes to Gilmour's guitar solo in Comfortably Numb. He puffs his first cigarette of the day, waiting for his roommate who will come out from the hall with the others at 10, asking if the gain margin in question number 4 was 20dB or 20.13dB. He doesnt care. She wouldn't care, he knew. She was the only person around who wasn't impressed when he topped his school, who wasn't impressed when he made it to this stifling place. She always has this larger-than-life aura around her, she always used to make him feel he had achieved nothing. The solo ends, and so does his cigarette. He decides not to wait for his roommate. He starts walking.

10:30 am: He's still walking. It is raining heavily now. There are urchins dancing on the road, rejoicing at the change in weather. The Zeppelin T-sirt is sticking to his skin. The cold droplets have been pelting him for an hour now. His skin is numb and cold apart from two lines on his cheek. They are warm, owing to the steady stream of tears flowing down them. The people in the shelter of the bus-stop point to him, cutting a solitary figure on the deserted road. He doesnt care. The only one who could have stopped that stream of warmth on his face, who could have made him warm all over in the cold downpour, was a thousand miles from him. "It is better if we never talk to each other again," she told him before she stopped replying to his messages, emails and phone calls.

Maelstrom

2009-04-19T14:21:00.004-04:00

Where winds used to blow
The sounds echoed from deep valleys
An abyss of pleasure
A treat to behold

A gush of blood
A lightning bolt
The lashing rains
The baking sun
The heartbreak
The pain

I cant endure it any longer. I am tired of all this. I dont know what I want, I dont know when I am happy. There is no love left, just varying degrees of scorn and hate. And the one I hate the most is me. Everything seems empty, meaningless.

The times, they are a changing...

I, Geek

2009-03-16T02:14:00.005-04:00

A stereotype is a very powerful social barrier. Wherever you go, you are typecast depending on your characteristics and attributes, visual or otherwise. While this may have certain advantages (like having a short introduction and... - I dont have much on this), this mostly works against you. Most of the people I meet around do not conform to the stereotype they are tagged with, yet we all insist with this senseless game of prejudice and predisposition, starting behind square one (square one is a really sane place to start) in most of the interactions with fellow humans.

Ever since I can remember, I had this uncanny knack of being labeled with a stereotype as soon as my latest test scores became public knowledge. Yup, I was always branded as a geek. The "cool dudes" of the class shunned from interacting with me, and there is no end to the "You dont need to give a shit about the exams, you'll ace them anyway," that came my way when I commited the crime of making my exam-anxieties public. Among my other crimes were taking interest in what was being taught in class, and answering questions teachers put forth for us to chew upon and then - you wouldnt have guessed it - answer.
I had thought that if there was one place that would accept a geek in its welcoming arms, enrich his curious brain, satiate his nerdy thirst of quirky knowledge, that place would be IIT, the bastion of geekdom, South Asia chapter (I have this wierd theory that geekiness is being co-ordinated from a central source, maybe MIT?). How wrong was I! Here my fierce independent streak, coupled with my criminal instinct of trying to learn stuff at this place rather than "chilling out" (a euphemism for four - or more - years of inactivity ending with a low paying job and a frustrating professional life), resulted in me being outlawed for the same crime that had got me into the place, geekdom. In my first two years, I strived to make people look at the other side of my personality, to the point where I started doubting I had an "other side". I strived to engage in trivial unending conversations with random groups of people (it is amazing, but males display a similar interest and indulgence in gossip as females), I hung out at the most ridiculously overpriced venues of Delhi, to belong. I then realised how pathetic and more out of place I looked.

I am a geek. There is no escaping this fact. I love food, machines, football, comics, fantasy fiction and rock music (not in that order though). I have my loose screws and I simply adore xkcd, I am a stickler for grammar and spelling (dont spellcheck this blog post!), and I have the most disturbed sleep cycles ever. Thats the way I am, and thats the way I'll be. I never was a smooth operator, always had this geeky, forbidding persona about me. Dont like it, leave it.

There, I now feel better. Now back to drawing a self-portrait on xfig.

Observations on a Railway Platform and off it...

2009-01-26T13:27:00.012-05:00

One of my earliest memories is walking down the only platform of Jorhat railway station, my little hand clasping my grandfather's finger, my baby brother in my grandmother's lap. We used to go there often, on the few occasions that my grandparents came to visit us in Assam from our ancestral home in Varanasi, rather than the other way round. I remember my grandparents sipping hot cups of tea as I ran about from one end of the platform to the other. Jorhat railway station is now a stop on the Dibrugarh Rajdhani route, but back then, it was a ramshackle station on a meter gauge line. A goods train with a steam engine used to pass by every morning, and it was this train we used to come to watch. The characteristic blast of the steam engine preceded it, inducing me to stop in my merry-making and my little brother to start howling. I would then watch in wonder as the monster of a goods train would rumble past, dispensing soot and hot smoke on the few onlookers and careless hagglers (of which, there were few, if any). More than the impressive appearance, it was the length of the train which made a deeper impact on me and I would grasp my grandfather's outstretched finger in awe, my young face full of amazement and reverence.
Our love affair with trains and the railway spans at least three generations (in my knowledge). My grandfather is by far the most enthusiastic about trains and stations. I remember him going out to purchase the latest railway time-table, twice a year, as soon as it was published. That book remains the only literature I have seen him pursue, apart from his Hindi daily. And he read it religiously, being able to quote the timings of the major trains and the track distances between the major cities. He is a well traveled man, and he made it a point to visit the railway station of each town that he visited, big or small. In fact, he would be more animated at a discussion of train timings than at a family gathering. My father carried on the love affair in a fairly lukewarm way, in comparison to my grandfather. He is amazing on the information point of view, regularly updating his vast knowledge base of times and distances from the internet, a beast my grandfather could not comprehend. But he does not share my grandfather's love of the physical side of the railways, the trains and the stations, in equal measure, although he is too busy to 'visit' railway stations. In those times that we travel by train, I have seen his keen eye hover above the name of the factory embossed over the diesel locomotive's front and other such "irrelevant" details.
I have been visiting railway stations with my grandfather as far as I can remember, and even before. I have been told tales of imitating a train's whistle before I could speak, my ride on an engine at Varanasi Junction as a one-year old. Those annual visits to Varanasi would always be deeply awaited specifically because grandfather had promised to take us, me and my brother, to the station. For my brother, the attraction was the treat that accompanied such a visit, for me, it simply was to watch. "We'll go twice this time," I used to shout over the phone.

Varanasi Junction is a huge station, arguably the largest and the most important in the region. Its front has been modeled as a temple with the three high spires bearing the name of the station in Hindi, English and Urdu respectively. It has (or had till two years back) nine platforms and serves countless people from all over the country daily. I was a visitor to this portal, where a huge melee of people would take you off your feet and on an unknown journey if you are not careful. I had had my first sip of tea there, from the steaming purva (Bhojpuri for the little earthen pots used to drink tea in the hinterlands, a much more eco-friendly alternative than plastic cups) a vendor had poured for my grandfather, the first of many more sips of tea. I bought my first comic book there from one of the countless A. H. Wheeler shops all over the country's railway stations, a Chacha Chaudhary, the first in a long list of Archie, Diamond and Raj comics and Tinkle and Champak magazines. There I had counted the carriages of a train for the first time from the foot overbridge as a precocious four-year old, who had just been taught to count to twenty, my grandfather had lifted me by the armpits to enable me to see over the railing. I had counted a goods train with two engines and seventy-two carriages a year later, and was rewarded with a chocolate by my grandfather. It was there that I waited in my first queue, for the platform ticket, which my grandfather bought as a matter of principle, irrespective of the size of the queue. I have observed a very diverse cross-section of people at that melting pot of idealogues and cultures; from yogis pure in spirit and filthy in person, to equally filthy hippies with huge backpacks, to large families on a pilgrimage (mostly Gujaratis or fellow Bengalis) hollering for a lost relative.

A few days ago, I had the chance to visit Ajmer Junction railway station. There were very few people around, evidenced by the absence of a queue at the only ticket window (where I bought my platform ticket). Although this left me in peace and tranquility for the next half an hour, this also deprived me the opportunity of experiencing the hustle and bustle that Varansi Junction always promised.
With a cup of steaming coffee and a place on a bench, I took to observing the few people wandering about. There were hawkers packing up after a hard days' work, idle stragglers looking for a warm place to spend the night, a few coolies sharing beedis and stories in their guttural voices, a motley crowd accumulated near the bookshop idly gazing at magazines and comics. The automated female voice announced the arrival of a train in the next five minutes. That caused a minor flutter, as the coolies and a few hawkers came out of their trance, joined by some taxi and auto drivers from outside, in preaparation for the new arrivals. The train came and stopped for five minutes or so. I got to hear the innovative slogans and the animated voices of the hawkers and the vendors, saw disembarking passengers haggling with the coolies, drivers converging on the new arrivals with hope in their eyes and voice.

I had always wondered what my grandfather used to do, sitting on a bench, sipping a cup of hot tea, while I used to impatiently run around the platform, bumping into random strangers. It was then, that cold night on the frigid Ajmer Junction platform, that realisation hit me...

Lament of the Connoisseur

2009-01-13T11:49:00.005-05:00

When Manmohan Singh opened the Indian markets to the world when I was lisping my first sentences in 1991, he opened us to a brave new world. 18 years later, we have Gisele Bundchen smiling at us from billboards, Penelope Cruz using her funny accent to make us buy L'Oreal, memorable marketing slogans ("cheetah bhi peeta hai" anyone?), huge imposing shopping malls, take-aways and the "brand-culture". Another child of this influx is the new consumerist thought prevalent in the Indian middle class. With the increasing accessibility to luxury products, both physically and monetarily, we have children clamoring for that Adidas sweatshirt for their birthday, or those Nike shoes, or that party at KFC. Instead of the friendly neighbourhood general stores, where the shopkeeper's 15 year old "assistant" used to deliver your monthly provisions to your doorstep while you mother ticked off items of her list, your parents now go provisioning at the "Big Bazaar", the huge discounts and free goodies working in favour of both your parents' as well as the conglomerate's balance sheet. And this is where my story starts.

This past weekend, my parents caved in to my brother's unrelenting demands of eating out at KFC (surprise!) and we decided to go to the Ambiance mall in Gurgaon. A short ride (thanks to the new expressway) later, we reached a palatial structure, which I realised was our destination for the evening. After parking our car in basement 3 (three stories below ground level!), we finally entered into the chaotic innards of that beast of a building. Although I can go on about the awesome meal we had at KFC, it would be irrelevant to the context of this post so I am (reluctantly) skipping it. Anyway, the meal was just a prelude to get us to come to the mall. I found out, to my chagrin, that my parents had plans of shopping at --you got it-- Big Bazaar.
I flatly refused to be winding through shelves and shelves of kitchen utensils and farm produce, looking at countless "Buy two get one free" boards and getting jostled by twice the number of bodies the Bazaar was designed to hold. The argument reached an impasse, until I spotted this quaint little (all right, it was neither quaint not little, but it was an island in that sea of materialistic humans running around like worker ants) bookshop. Needless to say, my path diverged from that of my family, with the customary "We'll give you a call when we are done" and a loving motherly glare thrown at me.
Again, the next two and a half hours went in a breeze, as I browsed through countless books. There was a coffee shop inside the bookshop, and the overall arrangement made it look less like a bookshop and more like a library (replace the billing counter by a librarian's desk and you are done). The sheer joy of beholding so many different books, across all genres and disciplines, remains unexpressable. In the midst of this nirvana, I received the promised phone call.

On the journey home, my mother said to incite my jealousy, "Shame you didnt come with us. The Bazaar had a special offer on books. Buy one, get one free."

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

All right, so much for economy and saving money, but you have to draw the line somewhere. You dont "Buy one, get one free" books, just as you dont have exhibitions for biscuit. A book is much more than an item on a shelf, it is a figment of someone's imagination. It is a work of art, and worth much more than its face value. Books shape people, some of them have the power to shape nations and civilizations. No one remembers what biscuit the Greeks ate, or what underwear they wore, but all of us remember the Iliad and the Odyssey. In this consumerist world, people have come up with millions of ways to make money and millions of way to maximise profit. But in this pursuit, what people are losing is their soul. We are now defined by the label of the jacket we sport, or the presence (or lack of) of a modular kitchen in our home, or the health drink we choose to drink.

Last night, I had a dream, which was not very pleasant. The year is 2020. I am walking in Big Bazaar and I see a Da Vinci and a Rembrandt with a "Buy one get one free" tag attached.

Dhunuchi Nrityo

2008-11-27T17:20:00.000-05:00

Author's note : This is a story which has been in a nascent form in my mind for about 5 years now. It is a story about remembrance, reverence and also a means of expression to the romantic who still lingers somewhere inside the confines of my soul. This is dedicated to Dehradun Durgabari and all the Bengali friends of my childhood who made those Durga Pujas extremely special and cherished in my mind.
A brief introduction is in order for the uninitiated. Durga Puja is the biggest festival, by far, in the Bengali calendar; the Bongs simply calling it "Pujo" (Bengali for festival). It coincides with the latter half of the Navratras (the nine days preceding Dussera), stretching over four and a half days (from the evening of Shoshti - Bong for Shashti - to Bijoya Doshumi - Bong for Dussera day). Dhunuchi Nrityo, the difficult to pronounce title of the story, is actually a custom which has started to capture the imagination of the general Indian public, which explains its frequent appearance on TV soaps and movies centred on Bengali culture ("Kasauti Zindagi Kay" and "Parineeta" to name a few). In this, dancers dance with one or two "dhunuchis" (clay pots with handles; they have burning coconut husk and ash for lots of smoke) in their hands in front of the idol of the Mother Goddess. This tradition is usually observed in most Durga Puja pandals in the late evening of "Mahaoshtumi" (Ashtami) or "Mahanobumi" (Navami).

As Probir entered the pandal, his hands automatically folded in reverence. His head bowed, he approached the idol of the Mother Goddess, Maa Durga, whom he, like all other Bengalis, simply called "Maa". Although it was now "Mahaoshtumi" (which implied that Durga Puja was already two days old), he again recited the prayer he had been mumbling in front of all the idols across the multitude of pandals in the city : "Maa, I am twenty-seven years old now and have all that I could have asked of life. I have a good job, a good apartment and by your grace, will buy a new car next year. I only ask you to continue guiding my way as you always have done..."

The sound of the pounding drums reached his ears, automatically sending the same rhythm pulsating across his body. His hair stood on end and he felt the feeling of overwhelming reverence surging through him.
Probir was not overtly religious, and avoided most of the religious dogma his parents followed, as did their parents before them. But he felt he had a special connection, a quiet bond with Maa. In his childhood, just before every exam, he used to recall the image of Maa in his mind and he would grow calm and composed. Whenever he used to fall in a spot of bother (which he rarely did, he was a quiet and reticent child), that same image in his mind used to carry him through the crisis like a steadfast ship in a storm.

Those voluptuous lips, curved in a half-smile, those full cheeks, the waist long curly hair, the little chin, all conveying an expression of extreme love and extreme authority at the same time, an expression of pure mirth mixed with great power, a tenderness mixed with rage, innocent naughtiness mixed with ruthless anger, the creator and preserver mixed in equal measure with the destroyer. No wonder people called her "Maa", she personified each and every mother in the world. But those eyes! Those huge lotus-shaped eyes! They inspired total and instant reverence in little Probir as his father narrated to him the saga of her fight with the demon Mahishasura. Those eyes conveyed all the expressions the rest of her face did and more. They were all-encompassing, all-powerful, almighty. Probir was scared to look directly into them...
With a jolt, Probir came back into the present. He realised that the crowd had taken him to another section of the pandal, closer to the huge drums that he had sensed on his way in. He saw the drummers pounding the drums and dancing at the same time, in perfect harmony with the music. The dancing and the playing gave the drummers an odd quality, almost ethereal. He had always liked those drums and had even tried to play them once or twice...
Probir looked at the flyer detailing the day's cultural programme at the pandal. He always used to look at these things when he came into the pandal, to decide whether he would stay to watch a play or a dance drama or to listen to some good old-fashioned Robindro-Sangeet. He found written in the bottom of the flyer, in bold green letters - Dhunuchi Nrityo, 9:30 pm.

Probir was wearing a maroon kurta and off-white pyjamas. His mother was doing his hair, a task that she had stuck to doing, inspite of the fact that he was fifteen and even had a sembalnce of a beard on his face now. He thought to himself, "What good is this anyway? I am merely going to sit in some far corner while the rest of the boys and men dance away. No one is going to even look at me. The drums are way too loud, the copious amounts of smoke are discomforting, and the men raucous. This is not devotion! I am sure Maa hates this custom of Pujo."

It was evening. Probir got off his bike and entered the pandal. The sound of the drums and the wisps of smoke rushed out to greet him. Everywhere he looked, there was a riot of colours, women in sarees, men in kurtas, smiling faces, everyone having a good time. A haze of smoke covered all this, giving the entire scene a shimmery, almost heavenly look. "I am sure this is what heaven must look like," thought Probir. But a loud drumroll broke his train of thoughts and made him look round to the source of the smoke and the noise. The Dhunuchi Nrityo was about to begin!

Everywhere he looked, there was a riot of colours. A haze of smoke covered all of it, giving the entire scene a rather creepy look, "Much like a horror movie", thought Probir to himself, sitting in his corner. His father and elder brother were among the people dancing and engaging in the frivolities. Probir was bored and wanted to go home. But suddenly, it all changed...
Probir's brother took a break and went to sit beside him, or so it seemed. In a flash, Probir's brother had taken him by the hand and pulled him to the dance floor. The sudden wave of smoke disoriented him for a moment. But the encouraging cheers from the watching crowd pulled him to his senses, and he decided to have a shot.
With a huge drumroll, Probir picked up a dhunuchi. He looked at the idol to convey the customary prayer at the start of the dance. Inspite of the copious amounts of smoke, Probir found that he had a surprisingly good vision of the idol. His gaze went to the eyes of the Goddess and he stood transfixed. The haze and the shimmer somehow enhanced the beautiful and the mystical quality of the eyes. The eyes now appeared to follow his movement, almost as if Maa was following his devotional dance herself. The eyes seemed almost alive. The feeling of reverence and overwhelm was nothing like Probir had experienced ever before. The hot smoke flushed his cheeks, but Probir kept dancing. The smoke stung his eyes, tears profusely rolled down his cheeks, but Probir kept dancing. The fallen pieces of burning coconut husk blistered his bare feet, but Probir kept dancing. And all the while he danced, his eyes were fixed at those eyes. Those eyes seemed to preside over the elaborate show in her honour, showering blessings over all her devotees...

It was late now and Probir had to leave. Reluctantly, he put down the dhunuchis (he had ended up dancing with one in each hand) and bowed one final time before Maa. As that night twelve years ago, and the ones in the ensuing years, Probir ended up in tears, not all of them smoke-induced.

Rant, random, whatever

2008-10-02T16:27:00.005-04:00

Sometimes when I sit down to write, I find it tremendously difficult to go beyond a few, totally unconnected sentences. Most of my thoughts are spewed out as random junk. Few of them manage to get published as a post, most of them end up as deleted drafts. Preamble over, I guess I should pen down something concrete now.
Life is taking strange turns now. Britney's song "Not a girl, not yet a woman" (God, I am quoting Britney! Syd Barret and Richard Wright will send lightning bolts crashing over me from their heavenly abodes. My heartiest apologies to those gentlemen, may your souls rest in psychedelic peace.) summarizes my situation.
The fun element of life in IIT has lost its charm ever since I landed in third year. This Rendezvous, I happened to be entertaining some outstation friends. They kept asking me what event is worth going to and I was clueless. Nitish and Khandu dragged me to Jeopardy, a quizzing event, and we bagged third place (yippee!). Apart from that, I managed to watch a few plays (come to think of it, I want to drag the entire Venky Hindi Play team in a line and shoot them all. Those insufferable wretches prepared a play of such overwhelming seriousness, it almost destroyed my mood.) and attended Parikrama's performance in the Rock Nite (they are Tolkien fans too! No wonder Parikrama rocks!). After reading Bharath's blog, I realized that I was not the only one who in their heart of hearts, hates Rendezvous (in fairness to Bharath though, he never said he hates Rendezvous).
My extra curricular life has also been revitalized this year since my self-imposed exile from the music fraternity. Thanks to Nitish and Apoorv, I have attended many quizzes and apart from the aforementioned conquest at Jeopardy, I also managed to come fourth in two other events (encouraging for a relative newbie in the IITD quizzing fraternity). I also represented the hostel in the prepared debate and managed to do a satisfactory job (even though we were nowhere in the final standings) and also regained my spot in the hostel water-polo team (though that was due to a manpower crisis. I had to keep goal and played all quarters.).
Apart from that, I have a broken heart (yet again!) to heal, though I wouldn't want to chronicle more on that. One day maybe, but not now. Life is moving on, though in a very wayward fashion, much like a drunk bull or a baby learning to walk or me, when I first learnt to bicycle.
In the work sphere too, life has been keeping busy. Intern season has started and I got a rude shock when Microsoft came calling. I failed to clear their cut for interviews in the written test. A huge blow, especially when I had to answer the multitudes who approached me with those quizzical glances and that "Didn't you make the cut? How?" Now UBS has arrived to recruit interns. A mindblowing pay package and that dreamy foreign internship all our seniors are jealous of. But for me, to apply or not to apply, that is the question. Its money versus my beloved tech, and I cant decide. I rather liked the exposure to research which I got in the summer past and would like to continue on the same path, but then shouldn't I be trying other career options before i graduate? Its all a terrible mess. Moving on, course workload has increased tremendously. Now I realize why my seniors only smiled at me when they got to know of the courses I had picked in this semester. Most of them had dismissed me as a raving madman, a few well-wishing ones had strictly urged me to change my course plan or face impending disaster. Now I clearly see what they mean.
A gloomy air indeed. But life's picking up. United have started dishing out the ruthless free-flowing football. And Berba has also started scoring for the devils! On this encouraging note, I would declare this rant over.

Ordered(?) Randomness

2008-09-10T19:31:00.004-04:00

Sitting alone in a lab in the middle of the night, I wonder what I am doing here (a question I should have asked myself long ago). Is it because I am enjoying the AC? Is it because I was on a phone call for three hours and am now feeling too cramped to move? Is it because the pathetic net speed in my hostel keeps me away? And then I realise, there is no reason at all. Here I am, just sitting alone in the lab in the middle of the night. To keep me busy in some form, I decide to think over some issues, some deep seated concerns, the fundamental hows and the whys. The awkward time and the deep questions make for a heady cocktail indeed!
The first thing that springs to my mind is (pervert that I am), pornography. I realise that being alone gives me the unique opportunity to visit "those" sites in the lab. The thought itself is exciting (dont worry, I am feeling too lazy to actually do it). But then, why did my mind jump to this topic in the first place? Is it because of the peaking testosterone levels associated with late teenage? Is it because of the taboo nature of the subject that makes me obsessed with it (you know, like Eve and the forbidden fruit)? And then, why is this a taboo topic? Why do we push "those" talks under the carpet? When someone mentions this subject, why do others either squirm or throw him or (rarely) her uncomfortable glances which plainly shout, "Dont spoil the atmosphere, perv"? Our society has advanced in many respects, but this draconian mindset still holds fast in our consciousness. Even when we (inevitably) indulge in such a discussion, or watch a pornographic movie (blasphemy!), we do it with a feeling of lingering guilt for doing it in the first place. Why is sex treated with the same degree of disgust as excreta in the "cultured" circles?
Caught in a devious web by these whys, I decided to divert my chain of thought to a separate matter, why are logic and creativity considered antipodes? Logic is considered the forte of scientists, engrossed in their labs, poring over pages and pages of greek letters and complex mathematical symbols or of abstract theorists and philosophers who can explain the purpose of creation but cant tell apart a sock from a handkerchief. On the other hand, creativity is considered the forte of rock-legends who are too high on marijuana to be taken seriously or depressed artists or suicidal authors or homosexual dancers and actors. And then, there are the normal folks! Anyway, isnt there a similarity in these extremes, apart from the fact that all the people described above are considered lunatics? Dont both the categories of people think in an abstract way? More importantly, dont both the categories of people think? Fact of the matter is, both logic and creativity are figments of the very fertile human mind. Both have the same inherent characteristics, its just that we percieve it differently. Logic, too requires imagination to postulate the axioms and similarly, creativity too requires logic to explain creations and put them on a solid footing. What makes normal people normal is that our daily routine requires us to use a combination of these two abstract concepts rather than one far outweighing the other.
Come to think of it, isnt abstraction the most beautiful thing ever conceptualised? To be able to think abstractly, with little or no worry about the background details (like missed meals or your girlfriend's scolding), to be able to work with "blackboxes", makes a human mind a very powerful tool. Every practical application, starts with an abstract idea. The order of progress follows as necessity, followed by formalisation, followed by invention. The vital middle link, that of formalisation, involves a great deal of abstract thought. The power of thinking in different levels of complexity that abstraction provides, makes a problem simpler to approach and modular too!
I think I should go to sleep before I make you fall asleep. Come to think of it, I might be asleep when you read this, so am I not making a senseless statement? (Oh no! Here I go again!) I wont even bother reading this post again (or maybe I will, it will surely help me sleep).

The True Champion

2008-08-01T04:01:00.001-04:00

Author's note: This is a reproduction of a fictional story I had written in school once. I had my friend Fahad Adil in mind when I had written this. He is the best sportsman I have ever had the pleasure to meet, a thorough gentleman, a great friend to boot and the "I" of the story. I dont know if he'll read this, but here goes...

I could not believe it. The dust seemed all too near, the grass smelled damp and sweaty (or was it me?). As I saw the chasing pack closing in and whooshing by, the anguish welled up inside me and I cried out, "That trophy's MINE!" I blinked back the tears, I cant cry, winners dont cry. And as I saw distant figures approaching me, friends, medics and good Samaritans, the cry came out again, "That trophy's mine!"

Two years ago, I was an average student, dreamy and cheerful. That day changed it all, that day when, inspite of overwhelming odds, I won my first cycle race in my first attempt. I became a star, a hero. My diligence and hardwork had received its just reward. The girls viewed me with misty eyes, the boys with jealous and wistful ones. Cycle races in our school are make or break events, the crown is hotly coveted. You may be a school topper, you may be the football captain, you may be the fastest boy in the school, you may be the god of debating, you may be the Head Boy, you may be the student of the year, but you can never be as popular, as envied, as adulated and as inspiring as the cycle race champion. To hold that crown as a class 10 student was unprecedented, it was a forgone conclusion that only class 12 boys can win it.
A year on, I was a recognised face, a school prefect and the overwhelming favourite to retain my crown. I didnt disappoint. I left competition far behind and recaptured my trohy with ease, elan and panache.
This year, the hype had started building from long ago, a hype which was huge even for the massive standards of the cycle race. This year was supposed to be my swansong, the year when I broke another record to become the first boy in the long history of the school to complete a hat-trick of cycle race championships. The competition was harder, a friend of mine had decided to take up cycling in the past year and had proved to be quite adept at it. We had never met in open competition, but I was confident of winning over this pretender to my throne. I had been practicing for months, those early morning rides, that cycling trip all the way to Mussoorie, a strict training regimen was evidence enough of my desire and commitment. I left no stone unturned, had let no complacency creep in, kept myself in top physical and mental condition, all for this one day.
It was supposed to be perfect. The preceding week, I had swept all the cycle race preliminaries and waved cheerfully to the savouring crowd. My chief rival had won his section of the field too, but I was not worried overmuch; his times were behind mine, and I was not even kicking into the enormous reserves of adrenaline in my body. Today, the weather was perfect. A sunny day, with a hint of breeze. Whoever I met, offered me encouraging words. I prayed silently and diligently. As I stood on the starting line, I could hear the crowd cheer as my name was called out. But they were unimportant now. On the track, all that mattered was me and my bicycle. I bent and gave it a final check. It was in perfect condition, just like me. I took a swig at my water bottle. I looked at the competition, my rival gave me a faint smile. I returned his smile and focused back to the task on hand.
"On your marks."
"Set."
BANG!
With the shot, I was off the starting mark. The wind bristled in my hair, my legs worked smoothly, this was my element. I had a smooth start. I was in the leading pack of about four or five riders. Everything was going according to plan. I would tail the leader for about half the race and then kick into a higher gear, pulling away midway. Then I would bank on my enormous levels of stamina to keep up the furious pace for the second half of the race, pushing the competition far behind. The last lap, more often than not, became a mere formality, a lap of honour, in this case.
Then, it happened. As we entered the final bend on the first lap, a rider on my tail lost control and crashed. As he went down, his front wheel locked into my rear wheel and brought my bicycle down with an almighty crash...

As the nurse pulled me out of the track and started tending to my wounds, my two best buddies came up to me. I could see the concern in their faces, their disappointment, their tremendous loss. The crowd would have a new champion, a new hero to adore, but to them, there was no other outcome. To them, the race ended when I crashed out. To them, there always was and always will be one champion. Those expressions conveyed all this to me and a lot more. It left me beyond words. I submitted myself to their care and only watched as they brought my uniform to me and helped me change.
The cycle race is followed by a school parade. My friends took me to where my classmates were assembling for the parade. Our class leader for the parade looked at me, came over and handed me the leader's sash. My buddies took it and made me wear it. The three of them went and joined the line. I was standing at the head of my class. Throughout this, not a word was said. I led my class in the parade and as we marched proudly by, I received a standing ovation from the guests. One of my buddies gave me a lift home, and the other brought my injured bicycle back.

On that day I realised what the race truly meant. I had lost that race, but I had not lost at all. The previous years I came home with the trophy. That year I came back with those expressions on my friends' faces, the leader's sash from the parade and the standing ovation from the entire school. I still wonder which is the bigger prize...

Woman Empowerment - The Flipside

2008-06-16T14:29:00.001-04:00

The greater number of feminists may not read beyond the title, dismissing yours truly as a "chauvinist". I have no idea of my extent of chauvinism but after what I witnessed today, I felt peeved. Heck, I had a right, as does any self-respecting and out-of-patience man does, to feel peeved! But I am getting ahead of myself. Now, on with the story.

My father had been after my lazy head for days trying to make me pay my brother's and my mobile telephone bills ("When will this boy have any sense of responsibility?! All he does is sit at home and eat! When I was his age I used to do the provisioning for the entire household, manage the budget and go to college!" and much more of the like). So today, I decided (at about lunchtime, to the extreme irritation of my mother) to finally go and get the bill-paying business out of the way.

So much for the scary preamble. After negotiating the rain-infested remnant of a side lane that masquerades as the approach to the telephone company, I entered the complex to find at least ten counters, three among them dedicated for payment of mobile telephone bills. Imagine my indignation when I realised that one of the counters was closed due to "technical problems" and one catered to cheque payments only! I then reluctantly joined the huge line at the remaining counter while I saw clerks happily sipping tea in the empty counters around me.

I had been in the line for hardly ten minutes when I saw two young women come, and to my surprise, walk straight to the counter window. Five exasperated minutes later I saw them leaving the complex beaming, their bills paid. I could imagine their conversation with their friends:

Friend : But we'll be late for our shopping spree in SN!

Bill Girl 1 : It wont take more than five minutes.
Friend : But wont you encounter that huge line?
Bill Girl 2 : No we wont.
Friend (Mystified) : How?
Bill Girl 1 : We are women, silly!
(All three laugh)

Their laughter playing in mind, I watched painstakingly as that line reduced inch by inch. Every now and then, a woman, perfectly healthy and capable enough to wait in the line along with us, came and gleefully jumped the queue. One woman came, surveyed the situation confidently, and impetuously asked, "Is there no separate line for the ladies?" One gentleman politely told her to go straight to the window, which she did.

Finally, my turn at the counter came, delayed by thirty minutes at the least. Fuming, I paid the bills and rushed out of that complex of torture. I drove home in a matter of minutes (yeah I drove rashly) and sat quietly as my mother blasted her lid over me being an hour late for lunch. In the evening, I told my father to send mother to pay the bills from next time round. My father smiled at me knowingly.

First love

2008-06-09T06:42:00.001-04:00

Disclaimer: What follows is not fictional. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely intentional. Nuke Submarine (read me) is prepared to take the full consequences of all that follows.

They say that your first love is fresh, that it brings cheer to your life, it brings boundless optimism, it opens a new world of endless opportunities, it makes you sure of yourself and at peace with the world around you, it brings that stupid goofy grin on your face, it makes you the butt of your mates' incessant jokes, it gives you the strength to endure, it gives you that ability to trust someone with even your life and that it leaves you breathless and windswept. Absolute lies! What my first love gave me was slow, enduring torture, tears, a ruined life, a completely shattered self-confidence and left me a sullen, sarcastic wreck of a human being.

Since those days, I have been in greater contact with the opposite sex and yet, the complexities of the female mind is something I have yet to decipher. Call me sexist, but I think I will never have the ability to predict how a girl is going to react, an ability I have more or less grasped when it comes to men. I find myself judgmental of everybody's actions and their effects on me, but I cant pass any verdict on her, my first love.

Whenever I remember those days, I recall those chances lost, those tears observed, that wall that I myself erected between us, my mother's remonstrations, the web of deceit and lies woven by the gossip-mongers, the huge impact it could have had on my career, my self-imposed solitary confinement, my reckless roaming the city with friends, a careless attitude in the outside world (some of which I carry till date) and the morose life in my room. To relieve myself of the suffering and the pain, the pain of seeing her with someone else, someone who personified all the vices I see in a human being, the pain of seeing her cry, the pain of being unable to do anything about her tears, the pain of feeling responsible for all her tears and mine; I gave my mind and heart into my preparation for arguably the biggest exam and the turning point in my life, the IIT-JEE. I dont know why but the JEE was my chance to prove myself in the eyes of the world, in my eyes, in my father's eyes (who had always said that I have never realised my full potential), in my grandfather's eyes (who had said I will never be the man that my father is) and most of all, in her eyes. She had never commented about my academic life, but this insane urge to excel at whatever I do remotely good, to basically show-off, that's what fueled my desire to study harder, to study at unearthly hours, to transfer my emotional trauma to my overworked body and brain. Study I did, and came out with flying colours, cracking the fabled JEE.

The rumor-mongers dubbed me the "perfect catch" and advised her to "catch hold of me". Ha! To catch hold of me for my newfound IITian status? I despise those abominations and hold them in utter contempt. If anything, my newfound fame failed to have an impact on my dynamics with her. I dont know how, but she came to realise the power she held over me, the crippling weakness she had become in my life. Worse, whenever I talked to her, the entire conversation and its aftermath left me feeling extremely depressed and guilty. But she sounded supremely confident in all those phone calls, as if she was sure of what she were talking about. I should have known then, that she didnt have an iota of feelings for me. But fool that I am, I remained addicted to her, much like to a narcotic. It took a sound scolding from my mother to give up talking to her as often as I was (the huge phone bill being the practical deterrent).

I have had it better since. I realised the error of my ways in remaining hooked to my first love which, by then, had become quite sour. I checked into rehab for the drug that she had become, took stock of my life and am a much happier and stabler person now.

In retrospect, I attach no blame to her. She matured earlier than her age demanded and could not probably grasp the extent and the purity of my feelings. I now know that she liked me at one point but that she was waiting for me to come out and declare my love for her. To hell with the draconian knight-in-shining-armour myth! I am no knight, I never was. I was a simple boy with honest intentions and a pure heart who was scared of rejection. And let me put it on record, I had told her about my feelings when I finally came to contend with them.

I know this post may have hurt a few people, but I am sorry, that was the way I was, and this is the way I am. I dont like to pretend and I dont like to lie. Lies have hurt me enough.

Vacation Time

2008-05-29T05:52:00.001-04:00

I remember this South Park episode "Summer Sucks", where the protagonists are bored in a summer break in which they have nothing to do. Quintessential dreamer that I am, I have been making huge plans for the summer holidays since my early childhood. I have it all planned in my mind but, in what is becoming an alarming trend with me, it rarely comes to fruition. A vast resource of potential laziness which struggles to assert itself, coupled with a fickle imagination usually prevent these grand masterplans, in the blueprint stages, from seeing the light of the day.

Consider this one time, when I decided I would take up cooking over the summer. In my own brain I had picked out the special type of cuisine I would specialise in, before I had even picked up the peeler! I even went to my mother with the idea and her spirited peal of laughter along with my subsequent loss of interest killed that venture.

Music is something I always had a passion for, but without the necessary will to translate some of that passion and potential (it sure feels nice to delude yourself!) into something constructive, I have never been able to actively indulge in some musical activity. All of us have had childhood dreams of being rockstars (even though we may be tone-deaf), I was no different. One of my best friends at school actually went on to perform with a group at certain shows. Seeing his enthusiasm, I too wanted to join him, but again, the wish remained a wish. I have subsequently tried to get myself to start on some musical instrument (from the synthesizer to the guitar to the drums) in the lazy summer months, but apart from talking to a guitar instructor once about the choice of guitar he thinks I should buy, all those ventures fell apart. I sincerely curse myself for this betrayal to my beloved music, but I even went on to say this to a friend - "What can I do starting on an instrument now? I am better off with listening to the end-product."

Then there was this plan I had last summer, where I decided to attach an electric motor to my bicycle, with a rechargeable battery that could recharge when the cycle would move without electric help (on downhill slopes or when I am pedaling, for instance). I had started reading up on motors and generators before I got bored of it all, dismissed the idea as impractical, and moved on.

I have had many hobbies during the summer months. I am an off-again on-again numismatic (coin-collector), I once used to collect river water from different places, I also thought of starting a rock-collection, but nothing permanent happens. Lazy git that I am, I know this would continue in the future.

This summer is going the same way. I picked a project which captivated my interest at the time I had picked it up, but sadly, I am fast losing interest. I had huge plans, including joining the gym to tone myself down (I have to admit it someday that my chubby looks are not that attractive!) and to start on with drums, but again, they have been (most likely) nipped in the bud by the ever-so-lazy Nuke. I sometimes wonder whether I made the right decision by not going for a foreign internship like most of my friends and colleagues have. I hope I did. I must go and kill a few hours now doing nothing productive.

Follow, follow...

2008-04-30T02:15:00.002-04:00

Its been a long time since I posted anything on football (heck why is it that I am most active on blogosphere when my majors are on), but I just could not let this pass. Last night, I watched the Manchester United - Barcelona Champions' League semi-final second leg, and boy, was I lucky.

After an insipid first leg, with United defending against the relentless Barca attack, I for one was expecting a lot from this encounter, with United and Barca being branded as the best attacking sides in club football today. The team news left me a little apprehensive - no Rooney or Vidic in the squad. The Scholes-Carrick combo in central midfield soothed the nerves somewhat as did the 4-4-2 formation with Cristiano Ronaldo partnering Carlos Tevez upfront.

The match was an exciting encounter from the word go. Paul Scholes showed yet again why he cant tackle for his life when he fouled Lionel Messi right on the edge of the United penalty area within the first minute. After the initial skirmishes, United took the lead in spectacular fashion when Paul Scholes launched a rocket that an outstretching Victor Valdes could not get a hand to. His second goal of the season, and yet, it could not have come at a more appropriate time.

As expected, Barca had the lion's share of the possession but for all their possession, they could not make it count as the United defence performed admirably. Like the first leg, Barca were limited to taking long range shots, Samuel Eto'o having another off-day. In comparison, United were the more dangerous side on the counterattack, with more than decent chances falling the way of Ji-Sung Park and Carlos Tevez, Nani wasting a hatful of opportunities. Cristiano Ronaldo had Zambrotta and Puyol running in circles at one end while Lionel Messi was dishing the same treatment to Evra and Brown on the other. It was a delight to watch these masters work their magic. Messi especially looked very potent and was the standout player from an ineffective Barca side. Popping left, right and centre, it seemed only the boy-wonder from Argentina had the passion and desire which befitted the occasion in the entire Barca team. Apart from him, only Andres Iniesta with a delightful run that left Owen Hargreaves stunned and Deco with a couple of long range efforts made any impact whatsoever. I was rather surprised to see the spectral figure that Thierry Henry has become at Barcelona. A rather quick and sad fall from grace for a man who twelve months ago was pledging fealty to Arsenal, where he had demi-god status.

The final whistle sparked great celebrations in Old Trafford, with the crowd bursting in song - "Follow, follow; for the Reds are going to Moscow!" The crowd had been excellent throughout the match, getting behind their team at every possible moment, vociferously jeering Barca players and cheering United's every touch of the ball. Scarves waving and huge banners being displayed, it was a festive atmosphere at the Theater of Dreams.

Class

2008-03-09T08:52:00.001-04:00

I could not think of a better title while writing this down. I had promised Naskar that I would pen something on this topic as I recently discovered that we share more than our Bengali heritage and our undying love for Manchester United - it is passionate support for the one true hero of Indian sport, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. This is to you, Naskar...

I recently had a small argument with a friend about how a certain Sachin Tendulkar never shows up when the Indian cricket team needs him the most. I just said - "Wait, and watch". And lo and behold - up came the two finals of the CB series and two back to back vintage Tendulkar performances which had the entire country in raptures and gave me a smug smile to show my friend.

I dont claim to remember Tendulkar's early cricket years. I got hooked to cricket in the whereabouts of the '96 world cup, when Tendulkar had recently become a phenomenon in our nation. Since then, the man has always stamped his class when he is required to. Rewind to the World Cup '96, where he blasted his way through the Curtley Ambroses, the Glenn McGraths, the Courtney Walshes, the Wasim Akrams, the Waqar Younises, the Chaminda Vaases, the Shane Warnes, the Muttaiah Mularidarans et al. He not only turned up India's highest scorer in the tournament (a feat he had accomplished in '92 also) but also the overall highest scorer. This feat was repeated in the '03 edition of the biggest tournament in which, he broke many records on the way to being the top-scorer and the player of the tournament.

The records, accolades and results kept flowing. The hurricane against Australia at Sharjah (Warney claims that Tendulkar still visits him in his nightmares), the blitz against Zimbawe and his nemesis Henry Olonga, the numerous occasions when he single-handedly decimated Pakistan's feared pace attack, the massive 186 against New Zealand in Hyderabad all showed the consistency that Tendulkar personified. To hold an average of over 40 in an Indian side which rarely made the top 4 in the world rankings (the only recognised Indian batsman with such a high career average) speaks of the man's class as does the fact that India have won a majority of their encounters when Tendulkar plays in the side.

A bout of injuries (the back problem, tennis elbow etc.) had people asking for Tendulkar's "graceful" retirement. The way the man has hit out (remember the 140 against the Windies in Malaysia?) against his detractors on the pitch, the way that he answers all who doubt his commitment and passion towards the game speaks of the hunger and passion he has for the game. The disdain with which he drives and cuts to glory, the flow of his dancing down the wicket to deliver a six over long off, the impetuous pulls and hooks, the cheeky late cuts and reverse sweeps and one the shot which he has made his own, the straight drive standing tall; all these speak of the pure class and elegance which the man possesses.

Another gem (apart from his inexhaustive talent) in Tendulkar is his modesty and his dignified conduct off-field. He does not lead a swashbuckling lifestyle unlike most other icons. He is a natural leader and has very healthy relations with his fellow players and all around him. Unselfish, unassuming and ever-positive, Tendulkar is one of the reasons cricket is still called the "gentleman's game".

After following and worshipping Tendulkar for over a decade, even now when I see him take the field, a soothing sensation runs down my spine because I know, a billion expectations are on able shoulders. And when the shots start flowing, one word involuntarily escapes my lips, "Class!"

Of the The Angel, The Baby and The Winker

2007-12-25T17:19:00.001-05:00

The footballing world is abuzz with a single name these days, Ricardo Kaka, supporting striker or attacking midfielder for AC Milan and Brazil. Kaka recently won the prestigious Ballon d'Or and the FIFA World Player of the Year awards. With these plaudits, he has effectively stamped his presence on the world stage. These, after engineering Milan's run to the Champions League and the World Club Championship crowns just complete a spectacular 2007 for the Brazilian. He beat a stiff challenge from two young men, who dazzled the world with their footballing tricks in the same year, Lionel Messi (Barcelona / Argentina) and Christiano Ronaldo (Manchester United / Portugal) for the individual honours.
This is what the "neutral" media had to project. Now to dissect the three players' year.

Kaka - The poster-boy for all that is good about football, Kaka is a devout Christian and is the media's image of fair-play and honesty. What we are made to believe is that he single-handedly took a mediocre Milan side to glory in their Champions League campaign. Saying that is a bit rich keeping in mind the sensational seasons Andrea Pirlo and Gennaro Gattuso enjoyed in central midfield, allowing Kaka a free run in the attacking third. Had it not been for Gattuso shielding Milan's aging back four and Pirlo's effective play in the centre of the park, Kaka (and Inzaghi/Ronaldo-the fat one/Gilardino) would have been rendered ineffective. This was observed in the Seria A, where Milan had a poor season (despite starting 8 points off the pace), where one or both of Gattuso and Pirlo were missing in key encounters. Manchester United's demolition at the San Siro is quoted by many as the hallmark of Kaka's brilliance. Look two weeks back, where Wayne Rooney mastered the same Milan side minus Gattuso. In that encounter, Kaka had been stifled out by Micheal Carrick. So it was the imposing presence of Gattuso combined with United's untested defence that allowed Kaka to weave his magic in that match. In another forgotten highlight of the year, Kaka pulled out of Brazil's Copa America campaign, citing fatigue as his reason for doing so. Not the behaviour you would expect from the World Player of the Year.
Lionel Messi - The Argentine teenager has been a sensation this ongoing season, scoring Maradona-esque goals with the same finesse and skill. The player has tremendous potential for the future, but as for now, I would not view him as the Player for the Year. The kid spent half his time on the sidelines this season owing to injury. Besides, his team imploded in the league race and bowed out quite early from the Champions League.
Christiano Ronaldo - The bad-boy, the Winking Winger, that is how football followers across the globe know Ronaldo, thanks to the media. Ronaldo has had a steller year, culminating in United's Premier League win and their spirited challenge in the Champions League and the FA Cup. The Manchester United man shed his selfish, showboating style of play to emerge as a much more mature player willing to seam with the rest of the team. He was the leading light of a feared United attack featuring Wayne Rooney and a resurgent Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes. The only blemish in his record this year is his tame humbling at the hands of Gennaro Gattuso in the fabled Champions League encounter. Again, a fact worth noticing is that Ronaldo came off a title-winning performance away at Everton while Gattuso was rested (along with half of the Milan squad) in the preceding weekend. On the other hand, Ronaldo also starred in Portugal's qualifying campaign to Euro 2008 and even bore the captain's armband for the national team in a friendly. In my opinion, he was the deserving resipient of the Ballon d'Or and the World Player of the Year award. But I guess being the media's bad-boy doesnt help at all.

Hypocrisy

2007-12-12T12:04:00.001-05:00

The Gujjus are going to the polls. Well, thats not surprising. With so many states in our nation, some state or the other always is going to the polls. But these Gujju polls are different. These polls hold in their core the hypocrisy that has come to be associated with Indian politics.

Rewind to February, 2002. It was indeed a sad month in Indian history, with Godhra and the subsequent riots. The Narendra Modi government was accused of not only negligence but also aiding the "Hindu miscreants". The event was unfortunate, but its aftermath was even more so. The way the riots were politicized and used to polarize the entire nation is deplorable. I will not go too much into what happened then, the allegations and the counter-allegations. One by-product of the politically charged atmosphere after the riots was the December 2002 Gujarat polls which were swept by a Modi-led BJP. The media and the "secular" parties branded this the victory of "communalism". That is how Narendra Modi became the favourite whipping boy of the Indian media and the "secular" parties. That is how Narendra Modi became a communal demon, how his every action started being viewed through tinted glasses. That is how Narendra Modi's Gujarat's robust economic growth, downslide in crime and better living standards started being ignored. Infact, when faced with no negative articles to publish about his administration, the media ran periodic articles about his apparent obnoxiousness, arrogance and his demonic attitude towards Muslims.

The man was no angel himself. He used the communally charged atmosphere to his advantage. He milked his image to the full in the 2002 Gujarat polls. He proclaimed himself the "saviour of the Hindus". He used his larger than life portrait to quash all opposition in the state BJP unit and to virtually rule the state on his own. Any issue concerned with Narendra Modi supposedly became a matter of pride for the Hindus.

Come back to the present. You would have expected the situation to change after five full years, that people would have found some better poll-issues, that for once development (or the lack of it) would be at the center of the frame. But no, some things refuse to die down. Sonia Gandhi, with her "Merchants of Death" remark, seeked to enthuse life into a flagging Congress campaign in the state. Modi pounced on the remark and used the seeming "blunder" to his full advantage. That was just the lustre on a very efficient and well thought-out poll campaign by the BJP. Modi, in his poll speeches, had used his hardman image effectively, pointing out his government's achievements and hitting at Gujrati pride to garner support and battle a strong anti-incumbency wave which pointed at a close election, according to most exit-polls.

The results are now out, giving BJP a sweeping victory, a victory beyond all prediction and all sense of logic. Looks like Modi played his cards right. The man used the right emotion to the right extent, touched the right chord with the masses and utilised his opponents' gaffes to devastating effect. These polls highlighted the blatant sham in the Indian political scenario. To a certain extent, the media has been a culprit of this hypocrisy, colouring speeches and reports according to pre-concieved notions. Some unsavoury words and phrases came in hearing and were dissected on a national stage - "Merchants of Death", "Hindu Terrorist", "Hardcore Hindutva", "Moditva" and so on. This is a disturbing trend, to say the least.

As a parting comment, why is a party openly proclaiming legislating ensuring reservation to religious minorities branded secular? And why is a party proclaiming legislation incorporating a uniform civil code branded communal? Strange are the ways of this world...

A brilliant start to semester 3

2007-08-21T12:57:00.001-04:00

The title sounds just so cliched! But I couldn't do with another. This simply had to do with the place which has changed my life like no other - IIT Delhi.
Where to begin? My experiences as a fresher are chronicled elsewhere. Now, I am barely three weeks into my second year and I have already gained a lot more than I did in the first year. I just feel like I have aged five years more and I sometimes have to check a calendar to convince myself that I am still 18 years old.
I for one just detest the amount of work that being a Computer Engineer requires. Well, it is supposed to be the most sought after stream and all this work is going to pay in the long run - but that does not stop me detesting it all. You come into the new session, fresh from two-and-a-half months of sleep and boredom and you are thrusted with a project which you dont think you will be able to complete even after you finish your degree, let alone in just your second year of education! I am not sure many of us will like that, I certainly dont. With five lecture courses, each with its own set of assignments and quizzes, I came to realise that the summer vacations were well and truly over. On the whole, running from one class to next, rushing to your hostel to stuff some of that stuff the mess-workers call food (atleast Chetan Bhagat was right about the mess-food in Five Point Someone), studying to keep pace with the fast-moving lectures and the surprise, drop-out-of-the-sky quizzes and who can forget those never-ending assignments. I take this opportunity to state a fact, one with which all Computer Scientists (budding or otherwise) would agree. It is this - debugging's a bitch.
Enough with the studies, even they seem to dictate my life at the moment. I have also learnt a few things about life which should prove useful in the long run. Two things, which I was enthusiastic about in the holidays, snapped. Carelessness, lethargy and taking things for granted cost me my place on the hostel water-polo team. I make no qualms about it, I accept it was my fault. That is what you will get for not attending team practice and taking your place in the team for granted. I accepted that. What I could not accept was the fact that I was chucked out of my Music Club repship. I have always had and will always have a passion for music but in my case, clearly passion is not all you need. You also need a certain ability of man-management or the ability to sell yourself to the whims of seniors just because you need them to put up a show (to heck with the soft language). I am bitter about my sacking, I sure am. This is because music is something close to my heart and I still dont realise where I went wrong. Spending a fortune on your phone so that you can call seniors and make them practice (but the high-and-mighty bunch still turn up on their own accord), going to the market till your soles are ragged and your feet tired, getting things arranged at the shortest possible notice, making the guys give their best inspite of all odds, not taking part oneself to keep others happy and this is what you get in return. Backbiting, complaints behind the back, in short a complete lack of integrity and honest fair-play. I just want to tell all concerned, I love you too. And to the next rep, best of luck. You are going to need it.
Well thats a few things off my chest. That does not make for some pleasant reading but those are a few things on my mind and I am relieved to have an outlet for them.

Memoirs of Kashmir

2007-06-17T02:53:00.001-04:00

After a long hiatus on blogosphere, I am back. And back to the sweltering heat of Delhi after a ten day vacation in the cool climes of the "Paradise on Earth", Kashmir.
So straight to it. Kashmir has retained all of its capacity of pleasing your physical senses and none of its capacity of soothing your mind. And I experienced it first-hand. The two faces of Kashmir, all in full public view.
As soon as our aircraft landed in Srinagar, a single word escaped my lips, "breathtaking". The cool winds rushing on my face, the full view of the snow-capped peaks, the prospect of visiting the beautiful locales of Srinagar and whereabouts, all made me think that I have really landed on the paradise on earth. But the presence of no less than five army men at the aircraft exit made me fall right back on planet earth. Three security checks and other formalities later, we were out in a pre-paid taxi, on our way to Hotel Vikram.
Throughout the taxi ride (which must have been an hour - I fell asleep halfway through), the two faces contrasted in a jarring effect. The city of Srinagar is enchantingly beautiful, the enchantment broken by three things. One, the sight of CRPF guards standing at every hundred metres or so. Two, the burnt and abandoned houses which cropped up here and there all over Srinagar (I later realised that these houses had earlier belonged to the Kashmiri pandits who had been "persuaded" to flee). And three, the sight of occasional landmark buildings which had bore the brunt of crossfire between militants and army men. Our hotel itself was surrounded by a high boundary wall (capped by barbed wire et al), the gate was preceded by a plank with nails sticking out to deny cars straight access in and to complete the effect, there was a CRPF check post, complete with an armed CRPF guard right inside the hotel gates. Our baggage was searched by the guards before we were allowed in. The landlord was a Kashmiri pandit who had been living in Delhi for seven years or so when militancy was at its peak. He had returned three years ago to find his house burnt and ravaged, and his hotel occupied by CRPF personnel. He subsequently rented more than half his hotel to the Government (which subsequently became a CRPF barracks - the reason for the tight security around the hotel).
The next few days went in a blur. The majority of them were spent enjoying the breathtaking sights Kashmir had to offer. And some of my time was also spent in wondering in my own head, why, just why are we so divided? It was an odd feeling, to see the beautiful place in front of me being torn apart in front of my eyes because of the hatred and the mistrust that a man feels for a fellow man. All over, Yusmarg, Pahalgam, Gulmarg, Sonmarg, I had a feeling of exhilarating joy coupled with a twinge of sadness. Although I would cherish the memories of the exciting sled ride over the snow at Gulmarg and Sonmarg, the adventurous horse-back rides at Yusmarg, Gulmarg and Sonmarg, the relaxing river-side picnics at Pahalgam and Sonmarg, the awsome views that all these places had to offer, the feeling of reverence in Shankaracharya temple and the Anantnag temple, I would also remember with a pang at the frequent military checks, the long and curious stares from the locals which made us feel like outsiders, the general feeling of an uneasy calm in the air, tempers ready to flare and most of all, a sharp divide in the hearts of men.
Back at the hotel, I turned on the TV set and found atleast a dozen Pakistani and Middle-Eastern channels, half of them devoted to Islamic propoganda. I was shocked to see the ferocity and the obvious preposterousness of the arguments presented by the "scholars" to glorify one religion and pointing out "defects" in others. I was shocked at the narrow-minded dogma being openly aired on a medium which would permeate every home and would only serve to stoke the flames of hatred in a State already torn by strife. I was alarmed to see how, by intelligent rhetoric and systematic argument, one could preach distrust openly in garb of secularism. This was not a welcome experience and set me brooding. I now understood why the army protected every small temple that remained standing like a fortress.
Everywhere I went, I interacted with the locals to find out the ground realities. I found the choice of chief-minister varied from person to person (as far as politics is concerned, they all offer you the same isn't it. Its just a matter of choosing the lesser evil), but they were quite clear in stating that they were tired of the blood-letting and unhinged by the strict armed presence still in the valley. They wanted to lead their lives in the peaceful way they were once accustomed to. They did not want hatred, they were being coerced into mistrust and fear. I felt thoroughly sorry for them, but even more sorry for those countless voices in the refugee camps in and around Jammu who wished for the same thing. Peace.
Which brings me to my source of constant bewilderment. Why do we hate each other so much as to go out of our way to destroy them? What makes us so narrow-minded that we cannot accept the characteristics of another person and wish them out of our sight, out of our life? I am not a pacifist and certainly not from the non-violence shool of thought, but senseless violence is not justified. But then, the violence which is senseless and (hence) unjustified to me may be another man's life's crusade. I would never know...
Kashmir, a paradise marred, a promise unfulfilled, a raw beauty raped...

Mixed Feelings- A year in IITD (Part I)

2007-05-07T17:32:00.001-04:00

As my second semester draws to a close with my last major tomorrow (rather today, I keep forgetting that I am nocturnal, but the world is not), I will leave for home with mixed feelings. A year in IIT Delhi has been a roller-coaster ride, with its twists and turns, but it has been a gratifying experience. The best part is, presented with a newer life, I have taken the challenge head-on and am comfortable in my space here.
Firstly, my approach to studies has changed drastically after landing in this place. In school, I had performed comfortably well without caring two hoots about studies. The elitist feeling that had grown inside me was replaced with a feeling of overwhelm as, for the first time in my life, I came across so many people who think on the same (or higher) plane than I do. I felt quite small in this place of people with high intellect. But as time went on, I could find similarities in my lifestyle and that of others around me. I found that the people around me were good in studies like me but at the same time, had their own set of passions. An even better thing was that people here had their own thinking, their own views on life and how to live it. Living in a hostel with so many other boys has been a gratifying experience in that regard. I have come to formulate my expressions better and have come in close contact with a diverse spectrum of people who have all influenced my thinking in their own small (or, in some cases, big) way. As life progressed, I slowly found my feet here. Among the euphoria of Inter-hostel tournaments, Rendezvous, Tryst and the seriousness of quizzes, minors, majors and the light moments including the frequent night outs, going to the theatre with buddies, our various adventures, I have come to identify myself with this place. I now feel that I belong here. I have come to realise that this place will give me more than just a degree. It will give me the training to live life among other things.
In IIT, I have explored talents hitherto unknown. My passion for music has been rekindled and nurtured. I have been a part of my hostel water-polo team and played football in my leisure time. I am also the Music Representative of my hostel (so I can claim to have seen politics on a personal plane) and the feeling of being in a place of responsibility is a different feeling. The feeling of being in a position where I can make some descisions which will affect the lives of others in addition to affecting my life as well is a different feeling altogether.
The flip side is that it has been a struggle adjusting to the system here and the biggest change was, I had to make this transition alone. The guiding hand of my parents was removed from over my head. At times, I felt lonely, terribly lonely, and had no one to support me (that changed too in due course of time). I still miss home like hell and will be extremely happy when I go back in the secure environment provided to me by my loving parents. On a much more mundane level, the food here is definitely not the best and I miss my mother's cooking too.
Well, that is it for now.

PS: Before I sign off, congrats to my fellow red-devils for the Premiership Trophy this year. Eat that, Jose Mourinho.

majors majors

2007-04-23T02:05:00.001-04:00

Life has never been so hectic before. I hereby stick out my tongue at all those who say that the grind was only to get into an IIT. I can testify that life is no easier inside one. Anyway, i cannot go on crying and cursing my fate. But there's blogosphere to vent my feelings.
Firstly, I can summarise my second semester (as far as academics is concerned) in one word - disastrous. Nothing has been going the way I planned it to be. My courses are going haywire, literally haywire and I feel utterly helpless to arrest my situation at times.
Enough crying. I have a plan for my majors. A plan to salvage my semester, to attain a respectable grade, to be at peace with myself. I know majors can make a hell lot of difference. I can bear testimony to that. My grade in the first semester was built on the basis of a good showing in the majors. So I am still hopeful of my chances in this semester.
I feel confidence can do wonders with a man and his performance. Confidence is the spark needed to ignite your engines, the fuel needed to keep it going and the lubricant needed to make it work efficiently. A cool and confident mindset makes a man a machine, a well-oiled, planned out machine. The glint of determination in the eye, the calculative expression, the set jaw, all speak of a man of purpose, a man of grit, a man who is willing to sweat it out and most importantly, a man who knows his goals and who knows he will attain them. The feeling you get when you have a plan chalked out and you are relentlessly working on it, that feeling of power, of charisma, that high you get is nearly unparalleled by anything else. I can testify that the mind is very clear, the soul is liberated in such a condition of relentless, passionate toil towards your aim. I close my post with this realisation: often, the road is much more enjoyable than the destination. It is precisely to enjoy this road that I have set out on it.

Treble ambitions

2007-04-16T09:13:00.001-04:00

Manchester United for the treble! Such a sweet and gratifying line for a season which has culminated in this. United are 3 points in the lead in the Premiership table, in the Champions League semis against AC Milan and in the FA Cup final. Now the catch: team no. 2 in the league - Chelsea, the other semi in the Champions League - Chelsea against Liverpool and the FA Cup final - you guessed it right, we face Chelsea again!
So thats the situation. 3 titles. Possibly the same adversary. The stakes are high. The team which dominated the English footballing scene in the past decade is facing the pretender to its throne in the quest for reclaiming its status as THE team to watch out for. All to play for. I personally could not imagine a more exciting title run-in. Before you all go off to sleep (I was even about to put in a player by player analysis lolz), I'll close this post here.
Before I sign off, let me wish all the best to the team which has truly rose like a phoenix, sweeping oppositions aside (oh that 7-1 against Roma) with ease and elan rather than grinding out 1-0 results week in and week out. Go, RED DEVILS.
United for life.

Hi all

2007-04-04T17:55:00.000-04:00

So guys and gals, this is my first blog. I guess this will be a formal (rather informal) compilation of all my thoughts and feelings.
Well, to introduce myself. I am an avid Manchester United fan (so dont be surprised or go off to sleep if you see a lot of football going on in my blog) and love football to the core. Other interests include music (I am in love with music), reading (will catch up 'Fountainhead' by Ayn Rand and other books over the summer), swimming (thats where my nickname 'Nuke Submarine ' comes from) and spending quality study time on the net. And oh yeah, before I forget, I am a student in IIT Delhi right now (Computer Science, if you are interested, which I am sure you are not).
As I said, I am new to blogosphere and quite excited at the idea of posting stuff here. I am usually quite serious and tend to think deeply about most things. Humor is definitely not my forte but I do tend to have my opinion (and an insightful one at that) on most things in life.
Here goes! My first post in my first ever blog!