Be the change you want to see in the world

I am probably the last Indian blogger on earth who has not yet written anything on the recent Mumbai attacks. Not that I have become callously indifferent to the terror that now seems to be a part of our everyday lives but I just dont have anything to say. There is nothing I want to say to the terrorists. There is nothing that I want to say to the politicians. Telling them something and expecting it to work is like asking a donkey to solve a calculus problem and actually expecting it to get the right answer. I have something to say to the guys who went on a peace march on Dec 3rd.






















I am sure you guys had a lot of fun. I can make that out from the stupid grin in your face. I can also make out that you guys are really creative. You guys are funny and write really great poems. The stanzas rhyme perfectly too. Why didnt you guys have a contest? That would have been good. You could have judged the posters on things like slogans, creativity, humour, design etc. I am sure most of you must be doing a great job as the cultural secretary of your college. In case you are not, please join the cultural committee of your college or office. I mean writing creative funny slogans even under such a serious situation is not something ordinary. Such talent should not go waste.

But I dont understand. I dont understand how this so-called "peace march" will bring back the dead. I dont understand how these posters will make the terrorists change their mind. I dont understand how these slogans will change the politicians' nature. So you think Shivraj Patil resigned because he actually took "moral responsibility for the Mumbai attacks". Moral responsibility? Really? So earlier attacks were nothing? He resigned because he had to. He resigned because Sonia Gandhi refused to back him this time because the elections are nearing and things are already worse because of the financial meltdown. I hope you guys know that you can elect our government. Well, I suppose the pain you take for voting will not bring the change this rally will bring. If you think running a country is so simple and if no one is good enough why don't you start a party and stand in the election. I hope you know the concept of "I vote nobody". In case you don't - "As per the rule in Section 49-O, a person can go to the polling booth, confirm his identity, get his finger marked, and convey to the presiding election officer that he or she doesn't want to vote for anyone". I also noticed that none of the posters had even the smallest idea to fight terror. Why are we so afraid to be a part of the system that can fight terror? Why are we instead turning this nation into a land of whiners?
JFK said "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country" I would like to add on: "If you cannot do anything, atleast shut the f*** up."

The wretched "Process"

Do you feel yourself choking when you are asked to design an FIR filter? Do you feel numb when you are asked to write the working of a microelectronic diode? Can you feel your brain cells committing suicide when you are asked to find the equation of the EM wave that comes out of a Graded index optical fiber? Don't worry, IT will take you in after you graduate. Like 'IT' or hate 'IT', most cannot escape 'IT'. Atleast 80% of students graduating from engineering college get into the IT field. This omnipresent field opens its arms to students graduating from all possible branches in engineering. My answer to all the above questions was 'Yes' and thats why I too am in IT.

1 year into this field and I now feel that a corpse living in a graveyard probably has a much more interesting life than an IT professional has. Not that programming is dull, yes it is easy but not dull. I know probably even a 10 year old can do the programming that we do in IT. But its not all that bad. The architecture is huge and is something really worth learning. What makes IT job the dullest job in this world (I know I know.. 'the grass is always greener on the other side') is the process followed. If you were to add 1 and 1 to get 2, IT will make sure that you prepare atleast 20 documents with analysis of all the possible ways by which you can add the 1s, the effect of the addition on derivatives or probability or even global warming and how 1+1 can make this world a better place to live in. Similarly when I get a project, the tasks allocated to me in Niku looks something like:

Estimation Activities_XML_ Beneficiary Name for COS
Traceability Matrix Preparation & Updation_XML_ Beneficiary Name for COS
Configuration Management Activities_XML_ Beneficiary Name for COS
Requirements Gathering & Analysis_XML_ Beneficiary Name for COS
Requirement / Functional Specification Rework_XML_ Beneficiary Name for COS
Design(s) Preparation_XML_ Beneficiary Name for COS
User Acceptance Testing Support_BeneBankAcc.Number in Intermediary
Unit Test Case Preparation_Regression Testing Tool
Release Audit (GLT)_MT940 to XML sub field 7 standardisation
Post Implementation Support_MT940 to XML sub field 7 standardisation

I dont even know the order in which I am supposed to execute the above tasks. All I know when I get a project is : I get the requirement, I analyze, I code, I test it, I release it to Live, I support it, I take the blame if anything goes wrong with it. I dont want to make 100 documents which I am sure no one reads, I dont want a defect on my name just because I didnt follow the latest version template of some doc in which the word issues was changed to consequences, I dont want to fill up a hundred forms just to make my code go live, I dont want some tool to trace my testing, I dont want to break my head trying to follow the naming convention in thousand different folders. I just want my project to be done my way. The process and the documents are driving me mad. A fews days back they started a new template document just to put in the mistakes found in other documents. Heres one that was sent to me by my APM and I was asked to update it. I nearly killed myself that day.

Gender-based colors???

Titan showroom:
me: I want a medium sized watch with date display on it.
Shopkeeper: No Ma'am, ladies watches dont come with the date display. I can show you gents watch if you want.

Bata showroom:
me: Sports shoes chahiye
Salesguy: You can check out these (pointing to a shelf with Baby pink and baby blue coloured shoes). These are new ones which have come for ladies.
me: No, I dont want pink, Do you have any with brown or army green colour?
Salesguy: Nahi, not for ladies, gents wala milega chalega?

Street vendor selling wallets:
me: Bhaiya, zara wallets dikhana
Street-vendor: Yeh dekho (showing a small ladies purse)... naya maal hai... fashion hai.. sab yahi lete hai
me: Nahi.. aisa nahi.. woh wala dikhana (pointing to a wallet)
Street-vendor: par woh gents ka hai madam

Why? Why is this travesty of nature happening? Why are even colors classified on the base of gender? Arent girls supposed to like army green colour? Arent girls supposed to know the current date? Are all girls supposed to have the same choice?

Let me start with watches. Go to a shop and ask for a ladies watch and youll be shown only the ones which have thin straps, small dial with no marking for minutes and no date or day indication on it. Okay, so girls will never have to know the exact timing. For them 8:44 or 8:46 will not make any difference?? I know I am not the CEO of an MNC that getting late by 2min will cost me 2-billion$ but yes, time does matter when my train from pune reaches mumbai at 8:25 and I run from one platform to another, punch my ticket and get into a local to vashi which leaves dot at 8:29. Now coming to shoes. Go to the ladies section and only colours youll find is Pink, Baby blue, Rin Supreme WHITE and some fluorescent colours. I tried one pair of WHITE shoes on and when I looked into the mirror, I could see only the shoes. It was as if the rest of me suddenly disappeared. They make everything else look drab. The ladies purse need the notes to be folded atleast 37 times in order to fit them in. You will hardly find girl's T-shirt with collar. These days you will only find "pencil" jeans (for guys who dont go for shopping with their gfs, pencil jeans are tapered till the ankle and can make any decent-looking girl look like a slut). 95% of handbags come with very short straps such that the bag will lie just few millimeters below your armpit and material used these days are so shiny that they can reflect light better than a mirror (I can rather eat a bowl of maggots than go out with that :-/).

I am not exactly tom-boyish but I prefer looking simple and decent like a normal human-being. I dont want to perform circus tricks wearing high heel sandals. I dont want my shoes to be visible on google earth. I dont want earrings that look like James bond's "Automatic Targeting Attack Communicator". I dont want a watch that looks like everything else but a err... a watch. I am done with the embarrassment of always checking the gent's section. I just dont want the manufacturers to assume that all girls have the same taste in things. I can understand that they are coming up with PINK mobiles and iPods to cater to the female population but seriously.. a PINK mercedes and Enzo ferrari?? Now thats crossing limits.

Feels like heaven

"Where do you stay in Mumbai?", "Anushakti-Nagar" I'd answer with pride as if it were some Buckingham Palace. I moved to Anushaktinagar from Kaiga (no, its not in Mars, its a place just below Goa, in Karnataka, a place so isolated that even radio signals refuse to come in, a place where the morning newspapers reach at 4 in the eveving, a place where you need to travel 65 kms just to buy a needle, a place where there are no movie theatres, basically a place where you'll feel as if you are the only survivor of a nuclear holocaust) some 10 years back. Despite no radio and movies for 13 years, I never wanted to move out of Kaiga because I have always been this small-town nature loving girl. For me Mumbai meant tall buildings, crowded roads, huge malls, slums and too much pollution. I thought I would hate it. Surprisingly I didnt. Not because I found myself loving all the above mentioned things but because I found the same "close to nature small-town" like place right in the center of mumbai. A place where the percentage of total area covered with trees is same as that of total earth area covered with water (I know I could have just said "more than 70%" :)), a place where you can wake up in the morning hearing the birds chirping, a place where each building has its own football ground, a place where you can see atleast 10 different types of birds living in a tree just outside your bedroom window, a place where snakes cross the roads at noon, a place where you can drive with your eyes closed, a place that feels like heaven. I dont think I have loved any place I've seen on this earth as much as I love "Colony". Anyway the whole purpose of this post was to show off some pictures of colony I took a few days back using my digicam. And I wanted to try out this new widget too. You will need flash installed in your PC for this. Click on the pic to see the next one. The sad part is you cant enlarge the pics and half the total space is wasted to show the text, so the pics wont be very clear.

In the name of god

When I reached my office last monday, I found my teammate's desk empty. I messaged him that instant 'Hey, bunk kyun mara aaj?' No reply. I messaged him again but never got a reply. He is not the sorts who wouldnt reply to an sms. Worried, I asked my TL if she knew anything. It was only then that I came to know of his cousin who had passed away in the recent delhi blasts. I was appalled to the core. These blasts had been just "breaking news" to me. '24 feared dead in blasts' . A little bit of discussion with my family about how no place is safe to live in these days, some repeated telecasts of the post-blast scenes on the news channels and a few articles on the newspaper on how the police, the intelligence and ATS in India are still not efficient enough to "tackle" terrorism and I would be done with it. But now when I see the look on the face of my teammate who has lost a loved one, I cant help but think how low (for lack of a 'worse' word) can the religious fundamentalists be that they can commit such a hideous act in the name of something which doesnt even exist (If god really exists, why is he/she/it not doing anything to put a stop to all this?).

"We, the INDIAN MUJAHIDEEN, ask Allah, the Almighty to accept from us these 9 explosions, which were planned to be executed in the holy month of Ramadan" was written in the email sent by them just few minutes before the bombs went off. Really?? Are they really serious or is it some kinda joke?? Those terrorists are not tribals but well-educated people. So even educated people these days believe that waging a holy war and killing innocent people is their moral obligation towards their religion. What happened to all those "Education brings awareness" kinda quotes?? I know its a banal question but the fact that people can turn into beasts over some mythological stories just escapes me. They have always shown god as compassionate and just but have also changed the 'rules and regulations' according to their comfort. A little bit of research tells me "Collective punishment and indiscriminate war were commanded or approved , especially in cases of idolatry in the Hebrew Bible which is considered sacred by all three traditions.... In spite of the Quranic statement against forcing religion on others, Muslim leaders have sometimes threatened to kill unbelievers if they did not accept Islam..... Around the ninth century, an important evolution of Christian thinking occurred, killing unbelievers was actually declared by popes Leo IV and John VIII to be spiritually beneficial for Christian soldiers."

They call themselves religious but they are nothing but full of shit. This is more than enough to prove it. "Sheikh Muhammad Munajid, a former diplomat at the Saudi embassy in Washington DC, claimed the mouse is "one of Satan's soldiers" and makes everything it touches impure. Mickey Mouse has become an awesome character, even though according to Islamic law, Mickey Mouse should be killed in all cases." Where exactly are we going wrong? What is that one supernatural thing that needs to be done to put some brains into not only these Islamic fundamentalists but even into our own BJP, RSS and VHP enthusiasts? which I think is the only way to tackle terrorism. No amount of Police or Intelligence is going to help. Ah well! I guess this is where "god" will finally have to step in.

Philosophical crap

"...If all is in truth Sachchidananda, death, suffering, evil, limitation can only be the creations, positive in practical effect, negative in essence, of a distorting consciousness which has fallen from the total and unifying knowledge of itself into some error of division and partial experience... ...The Life Divine justifies how the discordant elements can be reconciled into the image of the divine Unity. Actually what happens is something more than mere reconciliation, for the discordant elements are transfigured into higher terms through a process of transcendence, prior to reconciliation.... ...Transcendence transfigures; it does not reconcile, but rather transmutes opposites into something surpassing them that effaces their oppositions.... "

"...If one distills the essence of all established approaches to realization, then this is all they boil down to. Anything else that I attempt to do would be a movement within consciousness and as long as my center is exclusively within consciousness- i.e within a subject object relationship -I remain vulnerable to sufferring. Doing this sadhana amounts to the wiping away of all frames of reference, which is my only salvation, for every frame of reference, however elevated or exalted, brings about dualism..."

"....The essence of Modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence. Kant used logic to establish the limits of logic, and while he withdrew much from its old jurisdiction, logic was left all the more secure in what there remained to it..."

These are excerpts from just few of the passages which come for Reading comprehension in the verbal section. Trust me, everytime I read any article like the ones given above, I feel like strangling myself to make the pain that starts erupting in my pea-sized brain feel less life-threatening. I dont understand why people try to complicate the already complicated thing called life and to make it worse use really tough words which probably come in these books before they come in the oxford dictionary. Instead of mulling over topics like life and art, I think the authors of these kinda books should just sit at home, drink chilled beer and watch Steven Spielberg movies. That way their brains will be busy trying to make some sense out of the movie. And if they really want to flaunt their vocabulary skills, they can always participate in the International 'scrabble' or 'crossword' tournament. There are people who claim that books like 'The alchemist' (which is one of the two philosophical books I've read and I am grateful to god I am still alive to tell the tale) and 'The secret' have changed their lives. I just fail to understand how a shitty story where the "soul of the caravan speaks to the soul of the desert" can change someone's life. I tried reading "One" by Richard bach but stopped at the 30th page or something just when my brain was about to explode. I could finish "Johnathan livingston seagull" because it was not even 20 pages long, so the threshold was never reached. When I say I finished, I mean I read every word of it, without being able to comprehend even a single sentence. And this is exactly how I solve RCs in the verbal section and unsurprisingly all of them go wrong. Maybe I should wear a blindfold and mark the answers. The chances of getting a right answer would probably be much higher.

6 MORE things I wanna do before I die...

These are No. 11 to 16 in my list of "things to do before I die" . To see my first ten, go here... The first one as usual involves a car :)...

11. Drive the Bugatti Veyron Car atleast once in my lifetime. For those who dont know the Bugatti here are the details: Produced by Volkswagen, second fastest production car in the world (the first one being SSC Ultimate Aero TT with 256 mph), W16 engine, 1001 hp, 253 mph(406 km/h). Oh man!! anything for that speed.

12. Learn to play atleast one musical instrument. I have made it my mission to play Hotel Carlifornia and I am putting it in this list because trust me playing an instrument is not as simple as it may seem. I've been trying to play "Nothing else matters" on my guitar for so long and all I can play right now is Twinkle Twinkle and Godfather theme song (which is very simple btw). Trust me, it takes a lot more Patience and hardwork than you would think.

13. Fire a sniper rifle. I have a played a couple of shooting computer games like Counter-strike and I cannot explain the pleasure I derive out of shooting an enemy with a sniper rifle. If thats how it is in PC, just imagine how it would be in real life. Not that I want to kill anyone in real life. Well... not yet, but you never know ;) .

14. Skydive atleast once in my life. If Skydiving is only for professionals or something then atleast experience the largest bungee jump in the world. Basically I want to experience the feeling of flying in the first case and the feeling of free falling at g=9.8m/s2 in the second case.

15. Hack. This is same as the 8th point in my previous list but just more specific. Of all the illegal stuff I wanna do, hacking tops the list. I dont think I need to explain the feeling you get when you get access to something which is highly confidential, illegally. Not that I am a hardcore techie or anything. I cannot even format the text in MS word the way I want, let alone "hacking". But the feeling of getting unauthorized access to confidential data, even if accidently, is just too good.

16. Live the life of a farm girl in some far-off grassland for a month or so. I want to take a break from the traffic noise, pollution, tall congested buildings, my professional life and experience pure nature. I want to wake up in the morning with the sound of birds chirping, take a nap in the afternoon under the shade of a tree and lie flat on the ground and admire the beauty of stars in the sky.

"Its time we started looking..."

"Its time we started looking..." I heard my Mom say as we(me, mom and dad) were sitting in the drawing room doing our daily morning ritual of reading newspapers. I looked up from my paper and waited for her to finish her sentence. Its time we started looking for what? a new place to live in? a new flat? a good car? What??
"You know its not so easy to find one". I thought she was reffering to some job she expected me to find so that I can get out of Pune. Considering that I am pretty dumb to get a job off-campus, the "not so easy to find one" phrase seemed quite plausible.
"and finding a vegetarian one is going to be tougher". There you go again. These parents and their love for beating around the bush I tell ya. Now only after her 3rd hint did I realize what they wanted to look for. For a minute I tried to make sure that I wasnt dreaming and when I was sure I wasnt, I thought of suing my parents for child marriage.

"You are kidding.. you do know I am 22 right??" I tried to fight.
"No one is going to get you married off at this age. You dont realize how tough it is find a perfect match. Plus I want a vegetarian guy from our caste. I am telling you, a vegetarian in our caste is very rare. I bet it will take more than 3-4 years to find one" She tried to fight back.
"I dont care if I find one in 3 years or 30 years.. I hate to shop for my own clothes...how did you even get the idea that I would be ok with shopping for guys" Well.. the whole concept of arranged marriage is very similar to shopping, isnt it! similar?.. I should have said exactly the same..
"Okay... then tell me if you like somebody already?" she shocked me with that question. Wow I couldnt believe my mom, who for the past 22 years had been in the we-hate-love-marriages league, said this. I even thought she secretly joined the sainiks in vandalizing the greeting cards shops on Valentine's day. May be she was ready with a gun or something so that she could shoot me at the slightest sound of 'yes'. I took this chance to portray myself as the "good-homely-girl" and said "How did you even think that I could be roaming out with a so-called boyfriend behind your backs"
I decided to end the topic then and there and said firmly "I dont want anyone taking this topic out from now on. One more word and I am never coming back to this house" I am very good at throwing such dialogues dramatically I tell ya.

Man!! It is as if just yesterday I said to myself "Thank god I still have many years left before I can get married" and even before I know it I am already in my "marriagable age" as people call it. Just the thought of forcibly staying with some stranger and compromising half the things in your life and cooking and taking care of the house is so scary. I dont understand why people get married to strangers and to make it worse spend all their life's savings on it too. I can rather buy two Honda city ZXs with that money and save myself all that trouble at the same time. I dont fear staying single for the rest of my life coz somehow I am pretty sure that the 'love bug' will never bite me. If you want "Companionship" just get a dog and if you want a kid you can always adopt one. Keeping a dog is 100 times better than keeping a husband. I dont think I need to explain why. I will live my life my way and not go with the flow where people get married just bcoz they think they have to within that age. I will continue saying "I still have many years left before I get married".

Something I made...

I made this last weekend when I was forced to stay back in pune for some stupid work. I took the picture from this month's DNA magazine's cover page. I somehow just loved the snap and couldnt resist making a sketch of it.

I am not sure if I can call it a sketch. I mean I have used color pencils and not just a single pencil. It cannot be a painting as I did not really paint (or did I?). Does coloring using pencils come under painting?? I have no clue, havent been to any art class and I dont really care. It just helps me take my mind off other mundane things.

My so-called independent life

I had opened my blogger dashboard to update my other blog when my eyes fell on:

CONFESSIONS OF A NOT-SO-DANGERO... MIND

43 Posts, last published on Jul 4, 2007
I guess its high time I updated this blog. Exactly 10 days from July 4th I had left Mumbai for Pune to join the software company i got recruited into during my college placements. First time away from home, I was kinda apprehensive but at the same time very excited to live the "independent life". Let me tell you how my life has changed since then.

1. First of all I am earning, not high enough to buy myself a car but high enough to survive on my own, buy stuff using the debt card, buy expensive gifts and treat friends in classy restaurants. well...you can never flaunt your parent's money the way you can flaunt your own "hard-earned" cash.
2. I get to reach office 1 hour late and still not worry about the defaulter's list.
3. I get to sit for meetings in swanky meeting rooms and act as if I am trying to "make this world a better place to live in".
4. I am calling people 20-30 years elder to me by their first names. This is not that big a problem but calling a 50 year old guy- 'Gajanan' (thats my senior project manager) tends to get a bit awkward.
5. I eat bread for breakfast, cow-dung for lunch in office, and dal (read water) with chapati and rice for dinner. Maggi has become my survival kit and tastes better than anything else here.
6. I stay up till 2 in the night to wash my clothes. During day time I rejoice when my program runs successfully and at night I rejoice when I manage to remove the stains off my clothes.
7. Life without TV suddenly doesnt seem impossible.
8. I can now differentiate between a good branded cigarrette and a local one just by the smell. No please, I dont smoke. Its just that 8 out of 10 people in pune smoke . I get into the lift after lunch and I have no choice but to bear the stench of smoke till it reaches the 7th floor. I didnt know so many people in this world wanted to kill themselves.
9. I get to come home smelling like beer. Oh no again, I dont drink. Once in our office party some drunk idiots ended up spraying beer all over the dance floor. May be next time my company should think twice before giving out beer bottles for free on parties.
10. I have not seen a single crow in pune. A place in India without crows!! Not that it has anything to do with my life but still....weird I tell you.

Well... If you dont have a boyfriend, dont drink or smoke, dont take drugs, hate shopping, hate partying till late night, then this so-called Independent life isnt gonna be any different than the normal one.