An absolute gem

It was a just another trip for me. The plane landed on the bangalore international airport. I braced myself for the 50 kms drive to my house. And it was 7 in the evening. With the kind of traffic in bangalore during peak hours I knew I was in for a "long journey". I normally take the bus since cabs cost a bomb but this time I landed a good deal with a share cab.

There were two other guys inside the cab both of whom were getting down before me. The driver came in after ten minutes, started the car, gave his agent his commission and took off in a split second. He was a thin frail looking man, maybe in his late twenties, with his teeth badly stained because of ghutka consumption. It was a quiet journey for the first forty minutes except for intermittent calls on the front seat passenger's phone. He spoke loudly about models, films, theatres and the likes. I kept looking outside the window lost in my own thoughts about my life. After an hour when the calls finally stopped the driver asked the passenger in kannada "What sir, you talk about films and actors all the time?". The passenger then explained that he was a casting director and that hes done a lot of big movies in the south and a few new ones in hindi too. He started naming a few hit movies and asked the driver if he had seen them. Both of them then started talking about various Kannada movies. The other guy was in the navy and had come for a medical check up. Both the guys got down after an hour's journey and then it was just me and the driver.

We had half an hour of drive more and I wanted to get some distraction to not feel the heat. I asked the driver which languages he spoke. He said he was a kannadigan but could speak broken hindi and tamil. So I spoke in hindi and started the conversation by asking him how many years he had been a driver. The answer was 3 years. He did not wait for me to ask the next question. He got into a pensive mood. He immediately said repentantly that he is driver because he didn't study. He was from a village called gulbarga where children were not encouraged to study even though there are schools. The girls were married off by the age of ten. "The Police comes and creates problems but still girls are married off behind their backs" He said in broken Hindi. His own sister was married at the age of 12. "The parents just want to continue the relationship" He said disapprovingly.

I told him how things weren't very different in the cities. I shared with him the problems I faced in my house with respect to marriage. "What is your name, Madam?" He enquired. His name was Parusharaman. He told me about the driving business he was in, the commission he paid, the number of trips he made everyday and that he was looking for bride for his marriage. "I try not to work on Sundays but if I get a call from a known customer I go". We finally reached my destination. While I was taking out the cab fare, I told him not to make the same mistakes his parents made and told him to send his children to school since education was the most important thing in one's life. He nodded as if it was obvious. He then wrote down his number in the receipt and said that I can ask for help anytime. He dropped my luggage at the gate and said a one last sentence, for the first and the last time in English with me "It was nice meeting you madam"

That one sentence put a big smile in my face, bigger than any smile I had given to a stranger yet. His innocence, candidness, realization, self respect despite his current condition, comfort, helping nature and his peppy way of talking, not cribbing even once made me experience one of the best rides with a stranger in my life. He was an absolute gem and I sometimes wonder why such admirable features cannot be found in the richest and the most educated in our country. People come in all shapes and sizes and its just the most comforting feeling to see someone be something just the way humans are supposed to be.

Atheism strikes back!!!

I have always been a 'proud' atheist until recently. I am still an atheist but not sure if I am still 'proud' about it. Yes I am indeed proud about that fact that I am a 'Rationalist' but unfortunately atheism has more cons than pros these days. Anyway before I starting rambling about it let me give you some background information.

I was born in a typical south Indian orthodox god fearing family. As a kid like every other kid I grew up worshipping god without questioning why my parents did so. I am not sure if I used to think a lot but I remember questioning the rituals in temples at a very early age. As far as I can remember I decided to turn into an Atheist inside a temple. Slowly in my teenage years I started questioning everything - the tradition we follow, society practices, beliefs, etc etc. I felt great. I felt enlightened in the non-spiritual sense. I started looking down upon those who held those beliefs. I started looking for logic in just about everything. It worked perfectly fine for a while but least did I know that this thing I was proud of would eventually turn into a liability.

People may have blind faith on various things like a god idol, a certain traditional practice, a lucky charm, a talisman or anything for that sake. But what they get in return is the confidence, the peace of mind, the reassurance, the will to take more challenge, the concentration, the discipline and a direction in life. It gives them the strength to face the world and a "Purpose" to live. What does an atheist do for all those? Who should he turn to when he needs that comfort to move on from his depression? How is he supposed to get that feeling of stability? How is he supposed to get that peace of mind? Should "Purpose of Life" make any sense to him at all? In all who should he turn to when the tiniest ray of hope inside him fades into darkness?

I am slowly realizing that life is much tougher to live without a blind faith. An atheist has to deal with loneliness and hopelessness at some point in his life when he just feels like drowning and desperately tries to reach out to something to hold on to. He tries to hold on to logic but alas logic only tells him what can possibly happen based on probabilities and refuses to tell him what he would like to hear. Logic is ruthless unlike 'God'. Logic is no friend of ours. Logic doesn't hold our hands in times of need. Logic is a never dying evil. It will not let the atheist hold on to God because it will keep telling him that God doesn't exist. Now this is where the worst part in an atheist's life comes - when logic tells him that his logic is going to be of no help and this very same logic is going to hold him back from reaching out to God.

Life either seems to be in a dead end or a vicious circle. Oh how much would I love to feel secure just by holding on to a talisman. How I wish I never grew up continuing to believe in fairy tales. If only 'Living' was that easy. But nevertheless I am still a proud 'Rationalist'. I will continue this never ending quest called life no matter how difficult it gets. Someday if I ever meet 'God' I will thank him for making me the way I am. :)

The Awesome-st phase of my life yet

The third phase of my life... One of the top colleges in India... Very apprehensive but with a lot of dreams... my first ever hostel experience.... awesome campus... my own room.. finally.. that too with a balcony... my first management class.... Financial accounting... swiping card for attendance... induction week.... soft ragging.... First ever group study... lasting for a week.... intense competition..... quizzes and exams
every other week.... relative grading.... late night studies.... late evening tutorials.... quizzes on sundays... few awesome profs... lots terrible ones... mess food.... ultra short vacations.... a huge circus called placements..... resume submission..... feeling abysmal for not being from the IITs or the NITs.... envying those who were....first ever L^2 party.... getting bored within the second one .....se

ction parties... summer placements.... resume submissions....bragging about things you never did..... stressful days... consulting internship ..... first ever internship ... first ever consulting experience.... talking to people at a h

igh level... lots and lots of presentations... quick 30 minute presentations... so-called networking.. realized I was never that sorts..... Second year.... electives.... course bidding..... Finance and strategy courses... Globe globe everywhere...

.... falling in love.... making a great friend.... gymming ... giving up within a week because of exams every fortnight.... class participation .... never opening my mouth... stupid courses.... fraud courses.... Tam gang... struggling with tamil... but enjoying nonetheless.... lonely walks in the middle of the night.... clubs... club selections.... CCS projects... exchange... europe trip... awesome-st trip ever.... final placements..... big pain in the a***..... DC.... free movies and series downloads.... watching

a complete series in a day..... room

with the ground view.... rumours.... night canteen...... running the rat race..... going to bed worrying about the competition every other night..... getting philosophical..... lots and lots of introspection.... getting ready to face the world the way it will be........ Finally the convocation

And thus ended my 2 years of MBA in the Indian Institute of

Management Bangalore with all the ups and downs possible in the shortest period of time. So much in so little time. Here you just don't learn the management stuff but you also learn lessons about life. The independence I enjoyed for 2 years in this place is something I will never ever get in my life. However tough it was you will be missed IIMB.

A whole new life!!

Whats happening in my life? A lot!!

I have been living in a whole new world the past one year. This one year has made me miss every phase of my life I went through - my carefree childhood phase to my first independent adulthood phase. How has my life changed? Here it goes:

1. I am living in a hostel (a co-ed one;) ) for the first time in life. I finally have my own awesome room with no one to interfere. This is the life I always wanted considering the kind of anti-social person I am.

2. There is always something to study at any point in a term. Your sleep hours become so calculated that one wasted hour of sleeping can make you feel guilty for the rest of the day. Trust me it does.

3. I have become philosophical after coming here. I am still an atheist but I am exploring nonetheless. I don't know how much of those philosophical stuff is true but it does help you deal with tough situations.

4. I have realized that the cut throat competition can be killing only if you want it to be. But no matter how much you know about the truth, you will still go to bed everyday worrying about the competition.

5. There is no right time to do things here. I can now take bath at 11 at night, eat Maggi at 4 in the morning, wash my clothes at 5 in the morning, play tennis at 2 in the morning, take a nap at 7 in the evening or rather any point in a day.

6. I get to meet big celebrities throughout the year. From the smallest Vega Tamotia to Gul Panag to Shobha de to Rajat Sharma to the biggest Arun Shourie. I got to watch the Indian Ocean Concert which was at distance of around 10 mtrs from my balcony.

7. My To-do list will always have at least 5 things yet to be done at any point of time.

8. I easily lose track of days in a week. Somehow weekends don't feel any different from weekdays no matter how desperately I want them to be. There are quizzes and exams even on Sunday evenings.

9. I spend not more than 5 hours at a max per month outside the campus. Rest of the time you don't even get to see or hear anything from the outside world.

10. Watching a movie or reading a novel or even writing a blog is a luxury which you have to fight for by compromising something else for it.

Despite all these... I am absolutely loving it ;)

Yet another phase of life ends

Independent life..... Pune..... first job...... first salary...... learning how to do the job which had no relation to what I learned for 4 years..... projects...... meetings in swanky rooms...... talking to firangis...... deciding which tag to put the bank code in and acting as if that might resolve the Israel-Palestinian issue....... professional clothes....... going back to jeans and flip flops after a month...... free tea and coffee and soup and hot chocolate....... chatting more on Sametime than working....... annual appraisals...... gossip...... bitching about managers ........ getting frustrated.......... "Thats it, I am done. I am getting a new job" .......... back to counting the number of days left for the long service award.......... staying away from parents........ paying rents......... paying electricity bill for the first time in life....... Room mates......... laughing over really stupid jokes.......... trying first with just a bottle of breezer......... feeling nothing but still laughing as if we drank a bottle of vodka......... sharing.......... learning to cook.......... giving up after few days........ getting used to unhygienic food......... surviving on Maggi........ coming home late at night without the phone ringing every 30 min starting 830......... expensive salons....... dinner at posh expensive restaurants....... cocktails.......... screwdriver....... long island iced tea...... going to malls.......... finally not window shopping....... still waiting for end of season sales........ late night parties......... studying just to get out of IT...... cluesless about life....... long trips to beaches on bikes and cars......... grass..... cocaine...... shots......

Ok.. I was kidding about the last three again. But I have noticed that the level of things I kid about every time gets higher and higher. The three things I joked about in the end of the post I wrote about college life, two out of those three have been checked. So I cant guarantee about the current last three things too. ;)

My life so far (An autobiography poem)

In the international year of peace, 1986
along the Coromandel Coast in the tropics
in a small town with nuclear power plants
when the morning was way beyond dawn
as dark as the dusk, I was born

I grew up a shy kid, always alone
and lazy, but very active in my fantasy zone
sticking only to my imaginary friends
My parents tried hard to change me, only vainly
when I cried my way out of Lower KG

My giving up the next year made my parents glad
and I realized that real friends werent all that bad
The school let me directly go for Upper KG
even though I was as dumb as a donkey
never could I figure out why 4 25 paise coins made 1 rupee

I changed from a donkey to well.. not a donkey
As my grades started improving slowly
My parents then thought me fit for other parts
put me in dancing and music for the starts
even then my heart went out only for arts

After continuously dreaming of becoming a doctor
I went for Comps after the biology terms made me shudder
C++ and VB were something I adored
My love for coding was why my marks soared
and made me the college topper in HSC board

Why I took telecomm later, still escapes me
While designing filters, I could feel myself choking
The microelectronics diode would get me gasping
With the equations of EM wave from an optical fiber
I could feel my brain cells committing suicide

The superhero IT came to my rescue as well
Taught me Cobol, Db2, Cics, Vsam and Jcl
In the beginning coding for a bank did seem cool
but something felt amiss which I had to retool
I knew the only place where I could do that was a B-School

From not knowing how 4 25 paise coins made 1 rupee
to wanting to take decisions affecting the economy
only the next few years can tell,
If I can make this world a better place to live in
For both you and me

I guess you can clearly see my desperate attempts to make the lines rhyme and also that I had given up in the last stanza. ;). Making the lines rhyme in a poem is just not my thing.

Smoke 'em out

Now that I have resigned from my job, I feel as if I can interchange the number of hours I work and the number of hours I spend on breaks. These days I just get up and go out with anyone for a break. A few days back I went out with a colleague of mine (who smokes like 8 cigarettes a day and also looks like one) to the most happening place around my office i.e the Tapri. Tapri is a small shop placed at a point outside the office which sells Tea, Biscuits and Cigarettes. The shop usually consists of only a small table with all the above stuff and a small chair for the shopkeeper to sit and a huge umbrella to provide shade depending on the climate and the shopkeeper here normally ends up earning much more than the professionals who go there to smoke. You will find more number of people standing around the tapri than in a CCD or a McDs. I really wouldnt be surprised to see those tapris listed in NSE (Ramesh Tea stall (RMTS ^ 230.34)). Anyway, I digress. At any point of time during office hours you can find atleast 10-15 people standing around the table, smoking. Though this is a sad plight, there is nothing that can be done (or should be done) to stop these people from smoking their lungs away. Why? We'll come to that later in some other post.

If the government really intended to reduce tobacco consumption in India, then it could have simply banned all tobacco products the way its with drugs like cocaine. But yes, it wouldnt do that. There are around 120 million smokers in India and is home to 12% of the world’s smokers. As of 2006 India earned Rs 1,362 crore as foreign exchange and Rs 7,200 crore as excise revenue through tobacco. Exports have risen by about 67 per cent in rupee terms to Rs 3,383 crore in 2008-09. The tobacco industry provides employment to 4.5 million people. Why would the govt ban it completely? But then why doesnt the govt do the following too?:

1. Increase tobacco taxation - Studies suggest that Raising cigarette taxes to Rs 3691 from existing Rs 659 per 1000 sticks would increase tax revenues by over Rs 146 billion and prevent 3.4 million deaths in current and future cigarette smokers. Raising bidi taxes to Rs 98 per 1000 sticks would raise over Rs 36.9 billion in tax revenues and prevent 15.5 million deaths in current and future bidi smokers. When I told my colleague about this, he said he wouldnt stop smoking even if the price increased but he would start working harder to earn more money to be able to afford the dearer cigarettes. Calculations show that even very substantial cigarette tax increases will still reduce consumption and increase tax revenues. This is in part because the proportionate reduction in demand does not match the proportionate size of the tax increase, since addicted consumers respond relatively slowly to price rises. This is good in both ways because people who quit, quit for the better and those who dont, just end up working harder in turn generating more GDP for our country. The only concern would be of the low income groups (who form the highest percentage in tobacco consumers) resorting to illegal ways like robbery or smuggling to get their share of dope.

2. Lift FDI Ban on Cigarette manufacturing - “Manufacturing of cigars, cheroots, cigarillos and cigarettes, of tobacco or of tobacco substitutes” have been put under the list of sectors where FDI is prohibited. Agreed this is a good measure to curtail smoking but why let go of the benefits of FDI (hence more revenue and more employment) in our country when you can limit the cigarettes manufactured by them to be sold only outside India. Not worrying about the health of others outside India is not morally right but we have bigger issues here.

3. Improve the conditions of rural workers - It has been found that the tobacco industry exploits its workers by not paying them minimum wages and employing children among its labour force. Bidi companies pay very low wages, as low as Rs.23 per 1,000 bidis rolled, in certain parts of India. Hence, this work is mostly done by women and children. The govt should step in and ban them from hiring children and divert the work to other rural villages and ensure they get more wages and improve their standard of living.

4. Take advantage of Tapris outside companies - Considering there are 120 million smokers in India and considering each smoke atleast 5 in a day and knowing for a fact that the tapri guys earn more than the professionals who come to smoke, we can allow one "tapri" to be legally setup by an unemployed person (as the investment required for setting it up is negligible) for every 120 people who smoke, we can create some source of livelihood for around 1 million people.

Sorry for acting so MBA-ish. Now that I have gotten into a B-school, feels good to act as if I am trying to make this world a better place to live in. :)

I'm Back

I'M BACK. Back after an year. But back from what? Back from spending the life of a hermit in the himalayas? Back from spending an year working for the destitute all around the world? Back from spending an year in the hospital after imitating the Thumbs up ad stunts done by Akshay kumar? Back from spending an year locked inside my room to find the solution to 'what happened before Big bang'?

Oh no. I am back from none of those. If there is anything I can say I am back from, then it would be trying to make my life in IT a bit more interesting than the "life of a corpse living in a graveyard." Well.. the following things are the best that happened with me in the last one year but the last thing beats the crap out of everything.

Sometime around July last year I went on a "Moonlight trek". Basically it was supposed to be a 5-6 hours trek on the mountains in Sinhagad, Pune on a Full moon night. Athletically, I have an high opinion of myself For eg. I can somehow picturize myself running continuously for an hour or so but in reality I dont think I can do it for even 5 min at a stretch. Similarly I thought the trek would be a piece of cake for me but it turned out to be a 'night'-mare. The trek started at 7 pm. I was half dead by 9 pm. Once into the mountains there was no turning back and there was no possibility of calling a helicopter. There were 11 mountains in series and the last one had a tower with a red blinking light on top of it. We had to go up and down all the mountain and had to reach that tower (exactly the way Frodo Baggins had to reach the eyeball of fire). The tower somehow looked so close and I kept hoping for the trek to get over in another hour. I just ended up hoping and cursing and climbing and falling and climbing and hoping again for the next 9.5 hours. The trek ended at 630 am next day. There was not an inch in my body which did not ache and it was so bad that I had to resort to illegal drugs to get rid of the pain.

3 months later after another trek, I went down with severe jaundice and I was hospitalized for the first time in my life. I was excited for exactly 3 hours after which it started getting boring as hell. Hospitals should install Wifi so that patients can access internet from their beds while the intravenous drips irritates the crap out of them. Anyway Jaundice made me realize how tough it is to stay at home jobless. I wasnt jobless obviously but I had to skip office for around 2 months and I totally hated staying at home.

Things have been eventful on the office front for the past few months. I finally got Production defects, first time in 3 years, that too with a bang. Four of them in a week all from the same project. I am now so well versed with that program that everyone in my team thinks of me the moment they come across that program. Despite that, they offered me London onsite.

And finally the last and the probably the best thing I did in last 3 years is refusing London onsite and quitting my job on a monday morning. YAY!!

Atheism defined

Heres an excellent piece on Atheism by Amit Varma. Obviously nothing new but it couldn't have been put in better words. He writes:

Some people think that atheism means believing that there is no God. This is a flawed perception. The primary meaning of atheism that most dictionaries will give you, though there are secondary meanings that have evolved from bad usage, is of “disbelief” in God or a deity. That means that atheists are not people who believe that there is no God, but people who do not believe that there is God. The difference is huge.

The conviction that there is no God is irrational because one cannot prove a negative. (How do you prove that something does not exist?) However, it is entirely rational to not believe in something whose existence has not been demonstrated. I don’t believe in dragons or fairies because no one has yet proved to me that they exist. Ditto God. I am not asserting that God does not exist, but simply saying that I don’t believe in the existence of God because I see no evidence of Him (or Her, or It). This is not a dogmatic position: if you can prove to me tomorrow that God or dragons exist, I will start to believe in them. Until then, I remain in disbelief. That’s atheism.....

....I may not believe in God, but I have no doubt that belief in God serves a purpose for many people. In primitive times, before we understood what the sun was or why there were eclipses and storms, the world must have appeared a terrifying, bewildering place. Religion offered an explanation for everything, and made us believe that we weren’t as small and insignificant as, well, as we are. Besides rendering the world explicable, it made mortality bearable. When someone close to us died, we could tell ourselves that they were in a better place.
As science has gradually filled up the gaps in our knowledge, the God of the Gaps has shrunk, almost becoming redundant. And while the consolations of belief are useful, I would rather reject those false certainties and look for consolation in smaller, surer things....

I had gone to Bangalore and Chennai last week and every time me and mom decided to go out, as always the first thing that came to her mind was a temple. "Kabaleashwar Kovillkku polaa, vaa (Lets go to Kabaleashwar temple), Its in Mylapore, very beautiful", and "Theres a big Maruti temple in Jayanagar near Naveen's house, Varriyaa? (Coming?)" were the first two sentences I heard after I landed in Chennai and Bangalore respectively. And as always I couldn't muster enough courage to tell her that the idols mean nothing to me. Explaining to a pious person about your Atheist status without bringing god to a derogatory position has always been tough. I seriously don't want to hurt her and get her wondering where she went wrong in bringing us up.

There is certainly nothing wrong in believing in things that do not exist "scientifically" yet but what is wrong, is forcing the same beliefs on others. Its your choice if you want to use god as a medium to feel secure or get some peace of mind or use it to prove things which cannot be proven scientifically but that doesn't mean everyone should do the same. Also what I find very disturbing is people get so deep into the religious thing that they lose all sense of practicality. Theres a small temple in front of our house in Bangalore. I noticed that they pour milk, honey and some other stuff on the idols as part of the rituals everyday. There is a global food crisis out there, for heavens sake. India has more people suffering hunger - a figure above 200 million, than any other country in the world. Isn't there an obvious better use, all the milk can be put for?

George Bernard Shaw puts it perfectly: "The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one". The problem with religious people is that they never come out of the drunken state.

· · · — — — · · · (S.O.S) · · · — — — · · ·

I never thought this would be the first post in the year 2009. But I couldn't help. I couldn't and still can't get myself into thinking positively at this juncture of life. Things are so bad that I now see a plus sign made up of two negative signs. I couldn't stop myself from pouring out the things bothering me at this most depressing time in my life and there is no one who can really understand and help me out. I feel as if I am trapped inside a dark room. I can see the light coming in through the door which is slightly open but I cant reach it. I want to get out but something is holding me back. I don't know how the world will be outside that door but all I know is that I hate the dark room and I want to leave it.

I hate it all. I hate everything that is happening in my life right now. Every bit of it. I hate it when I wake up and open my eyes to find the same sad room I sleep in, in Pune. I hate the walk I need to take from my house to office with the din of motorcycles and the stench of pollution accompanying me. I hate to enter the posh and sophisticated 8 floors building I call office. I hate to sit at my desk with people all around me continuously blabbering crap and faking a British accent every time they are on the phone. I hate to go back to the box I live in with not an inch of privacy and roomies who are totally not my kind, they are nice.. mind you.. but not my kind. I hate to go to bed after the unpalatable dinner I have everyday. I hate my work. Somehow I don't understand why everyone around me acts as if they are writing a code which can prevent a genocide from happening. I just don't care. I don't care what goes live when. I don't care if someone else's program fails in production when I am supposed to. I don't care if a query takes 3.45 sec to finish when it can be optimized to 2.98sec. I say 'yes' to anything my TL says without actually listening to a word because everytime she speaks I just hear "blah blah blah... blah blah blah". I draw cartoons on Paper cups during team meetings. The only thing I wonder about when I see bar graphs in meetings is whether the colors used for each bar matches well with each other(not that I hate graphs, I just hate the petty things IT makes graphs for). I simply don't care and I somehow can't help it. IT is just not the right place for me. There is no one who seems to understand my problem. People seem happy here. My friends put in at least 12 hours a day in office doing this shitty work.

I now regret every decision I took in my life since childhood. I now realize what all I could have done and can't be done now because its too late for that. I blame my parents for telling me only about "IIT", MBA, MS and MBBS when I was a kid and not about other streams being interesting too. I blame myself for being indecisive when I was in 10th. I blame all Middle class families for their mentality of making their kids go for either Engg or MBBS and securing a "Safe job". No wonder our country has the highest number of IT and call-center employees. This mentality is just turning all talented people in our country into "English-speaking low-wage Software coolies".

This post is my desperate plea to all who visit my blog and those who accidently visited this blog, to help me get any job other than IT and I promise I will give you half my first month's salary (the higher the salary is, the more you get ;) can be negotiated too). An NGO with little pay or a temp IT job in Mumbai or Bangalore will also do. Atleast one of my problems (staying in Pune) will be solved. Just tell me about the vacancies. Do anything but get me out of this god-forsaken place. I am done living this "so-called" independent life.

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.