IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

Random Thoughts, Episode 2

2012-01-06T11:30:00.000+05:30

1> Tom Hanks in the photo in one of my earlier posts regarding Forrest Gump eerily resembles Aamir Khan in Ghajini/Three Idiots (closest I can think of). Also, now that I have photo-shopped these two images together, the one of Gump sitting on the bench somehow reminds me more of the character of Mr. Bean (whom I religiously hate, even in the cartoon series), though I can't exactly make out why. Weird.

2> The shortest of naps are the ones generating the most interesting of dreams.

Conclusive Evidence Activity: Read Come Again.. Or, Have I?

3> For some days now, I have been deliberating on a very interesting theory that there has been a link between the writer's block, well, blocking me and the last two years of my engineering that somehow culminated in me having only two posts each on my blog for the consecutive years 2010 and 2011. Total = 4. Was it because of:

a) About one-third of my last four semesters being spent in the volleyball court that the Electrical Department was so generous to bestow upon a bunch of sincere engineering brats who would do anything to avoid getting into the Department?

b) About another one-third being spent in numerous trips to the Cafe House, the FabLab, the stores, the Boat Club, Uttam Copiers, and Rajeev Electronics (with at least 60 minutes of staying time)?

c) About a last one-third being spent in the B.Tech Lab that was so dear to us Electrical peepul, where the word B.Tech was lavished upon with a meaning that has been fully done justice to by each and every person of the class, if I might proudly say, by boycotting every single thing meant to be done as a Final Year student, and doing exactly the opposite of it?

Note: These compulsorily included, every day: photography in weird poses - at a minimum of 3 photoes/student/day, playing Angry Birds (in my case, Titan Quest), scribbling idiotic messages on the chalkboard, burning up a minimum of 12 electronic components (if minor, less costly), and 6 (if major, more costly), Facebooking in the face of the poor professor who was unlucky enough to be present in the lab at that time, playing volleyball inside the lab with the door closed (FYI, glass door with wooden framework that possessed the sound-proofing capacity of a teacup) with a lecture going on in the adjacent classroom, and of course, playing volleyball in the court.

4> I miss volleyball. :(

5> However, when I spent one whole day sitting in my prestigious workstation, not doing a single bit of work, but going through a lot of my posts, and a lot of my drafts (which, by the way, are greater in number than my posts), on my Samsung Galaxy SL (of course I had to mention it somewhere! Do you think I would risk leaving out any opportunity to brag :P), I realized that my writing has changed. A lot. Not in essence, but in style. At core, it's still the carefree, wildly enthusiastic and a bit of a stupidly emotional soul writing, but the wrapper has metamorphosed to a more refined kind. If I have to use the word, mature. Also, have let go of the innumerable italics, bolds, underlines, caps, dots, punctuations and colloquial what-nots that I had compelled myself to use in my writings under the guise of assertion, thanks to well-worded advice from a couple of folk. (No, now do not go back to my earlier posts and check out how many exclamation marks my posts include :P) So, the involuntary block was actually a painfully slow makeover, I think.

6> A Timeline on everything is not necessary. Sometimes, haphazardness is the key.

7> Linking Google+, Blogger, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and all the other hundred thousand accounts that each retarded entity (including me) on this earth possesses online is as easy as the pain in the ass it causes thereafter. It's just like sticking a poster on your forehead that says - "This is the address of my current residence, these are the exact locations of the money, the jewellery, and the documents of the assets I hold, this is the combination key of my locker that I so intelligently generated, please come and loot me." The only advantage is that, probably the chor will leave behind souvenirs in sympathy.

8> My office \m/ I won't say anything more, for after all, it is a publicly accessible blog. Maybe, some day in the future, when I am more courageous and less cowardly, you might hear more. (Hint: Watch out, 1.5 years from now.)

9> Random thoughts are too difficult to collect.

10> I just found out that me joining Twitter has had a significant effect on the length of my writings. Shorter words, shorter sentences, healthy keyboard. (Note: The word short in this context is inevitably defined as "in comparison to my earlier compositions".)

Conclusive Evidence Activity: Determine the differences between Random Thoughts, Episode 1 and Episode 2.

Enough for now. But, the fingers will be hungry once again, soon.

A Mad Tree Party

2011-12-31T13:32:00.000+05:30

FYI- My article for the Pune Tree Fest 2012, the original can be found here: A Mad Tree Party

I haven’t read the newspaper, not in a long time. I haven’t written, not in a long time. But yesterday, when after so many days, I picked up the Times of India lying on my couch, I had no idea why this tree festival article caught my eye, and made me read that page longer than any other, ultimately ending up in this tangled representation of a multitude of experiences. I was actually surprised, I mean, I have never been much of a strong idealist for plant-life, I love greenery and blossoming nature just like the next person, then why the pause?

And then suddenly, out of nowhere, a small scene flashed out. A little girl, sneaking chili seeds out from the potato sabzi in her lunch, just like every other day, only this time, not throwing them into the bin, but secretly putting them into a small white plastic Shikakai pot hastily filled up with damp mud, in the few minutes that her mother dozed off. Who watered it every day from her water bottle, fearing someone would discover if the water in the jug seemed lesser. Who looked at the tiny pot every day, and prayed that it grew enough chilies so her mother wouldn’t have to buy from the grumpy old vegetable lady. Who was terrified when her parents finally discovered it, fearing the worst, and jumped in ecstatic joy when they allowed her to keep it and gave it a nice, cozy place of its own in the window! Who looked in wonder at her pot after a few weeks, that contained a miraculous transformation from few seedlings to a handsome, swaying chili plant, and decorated it with stickers and glitter and chart paper and wrote in proud letters – My Tree. Who took it to her school and showed it to everyone and celebrated the plant. Who still has the white pot, although the plant, too big to grow in it now, had to be shifted to the park.

My relationship with plants has just been so natural that I don’t at all remember making a conscious effort to do anything in that regard. For no reason, I just choose them. More moments started flashing out in random order - I remembered caressing the jasmine plant when I plucked a flower, giving a long speech in front of the neem tree that always greeted me every morning when I looked out the window, reading tree chapters in my textbook with extra interest. I remember listening awestruck to stories of my grandfather tending to his neat vegetable garden in our village house backyard, I remember climbing onto the slanted rooftop to wave huge bumble bees off the bean-vines (even though I felt dead scared of them), I remember pleading excitedly to my mother to take me to the huge farm of her aunt where they used to grow everything that could be grown and who didn’t buy a single food item from outside except salt, I remember my great-uncle teaching me the names and the origins of different varieties of spices that he’d planted in his kitchen garden.

And the most splendid experience of all - spending the last four years of my life in companion with a tree that had become an inseparable part of me – The Banyan Tree of the CoEP campus. It was my spot for contemplation, its thick stem a hiding place for dodging professors who would walk by it to the next lecture classroom, dozing off beneath its cool aura as we waited for the next practical, to go so far as to conduct an entire club meeting underneath the natural canopy it provided! Every day included at least one trip to the tree, even if it had to be the only reason to walk to that side of the campus (well, not so much considering how lethargic I can be, but yeah, lots of trips :P).

The countless moments spent beneath its benevolent branches, blink smilingly up at me now, as I can’t help thinking, trees are companionship. Trees understand. Trees soothe. But trees also rebel. Because trees, are life. And that is why, trees are memories. :)

Come Again.. Or, have I?

2011-12-25T09:56:00.000+05:30

I have decided it's high time that I have kept ignoring my inclination towards expressing my completely irrelevant thoughts in the light of less important things (ex: work, office). :D Well, I was just going through the multitude of drafts in my blog that had collected alphabetical dust over the past few years, having never seen the light of the desert that is in the middle of nowhere. I found many that will soon come out, a bit dusted and toned, but there is one that I would like to put up, uncut now.

14/06/2009

The last week was one of the most bizarre I've encountered, in terms of night-time adventures. One of the rare few string of days during which I've gone to bed extremely early (around 10.30 - 11pm), and dreamt the most inexplicable of dreams. But yesterday night will take the cake, baker and his oven in the Department of the Unexplainable. Let me jot it down beforeit trickles away, and I’ll try to interpret it later.

Scene: My home, the place where I've been staying since 18 years. Now, it's very important to picturise the venue of this incident to take in the fantastically out-of the world nature of this dream. I stay on the 3rd floor of our measly three-storeyed building, and there's a couple more flights of stairs separating us from the terrace. Meaning, from our flat (no. 25), the terrace cannot be viewed directly, but which can be done from no. 28. There is a small square space before every flat, and similarly, before the entrance to the open roof area, enough to put a chair or two.

Time: Sunset, around 17:45 hours, and my granddad is sitting on an easy chair in the squarish space before flat no. 28, and staring on in front (exactly at what, a person can't see from behind unless they walk up to that level, combined with the fact that the door to the terrace was not exactly open). I, after finishing a yummy snack, came out to wash myhands (Yes, there was a wash basin outside the house, and yes, my mind has the capability of conjuring up just about anything :|) and saw grandpa sittingalone, so I just went by to sit with him and spend some time. He told me to take him up thethe last flight of stairs towards the terrace, and when we reached there, he toldme to completely open the half closed door, saying he wanted to show me something. I was on his left side, closer to the door, and when I opened it, what I saw could not be digested with jaw closed. It was one of the most mysterioussunsets of my life.

I pushed the door and it slowly twirled on its rusty hinges, to reveal a brightly shining, perfectlynormal, evening sun. Then, just as we were admiring its beauty, in about 5 seconds it turned into ajust-about-to-go-down beautiful, golden orangish hue-giving off, calm, all-pervading, light sun. I looked on, mesmerised. But then, in the next 5 seconds, the colour of it swept off to reveal a shy sky bluefrom right to left! Just as my sluggish mind realized it had to register panic, the sun camouflaged itself into the light ititself gave off to the sky (making it light orange), and dark black spotsstarted hovering in the sky, in the place where earlier the sun was visible,making it appear as if there was a black sun in the sky, with huge chunks tornapart from it, and the other remaining chunks started vibrating violently as if they wanted to be set free from the tortuously restricted circular sunspace.

The next few seconds wereso shocking that I almost fell over on grandpa’s easy chair; the black spots actuallybroke off from the space (as if someone had suddenly jerked off the invisible chains holding them down to the roundish prison) and flew off, leaving behind nothing but the slightlyorangish sky. When they were breaking free, it appeared as if the spots weregreat, big black bats that had all but covered the sun, and they were now flying away into the horizon after gobbling it down.

No sun, for a few minutes, and thenthe cycle kept repeating. And when I looked back to see the expression on grandpa's face, he had dozed off.

I stood there, perplexed. All the contentment that my post-nap snack had filled me with was gone. What does this mean? Did I just see a novel form ofeclipse that has never been witnessed before? Perhaps, Bird Eclipse? :|

*At this point, I woke up, covered in sweat, as if I had been the one doing all the flying, cursing the pillow for being too hard, at which point, I realized that my pillow had actually been a set of internship assignments. Sigh.*

My Little House

2010-12-15T07:40:00.001+05:30

O dusty door of maple wood,

How more will you withstand?
Along you swing, your rusty hinge,
With a soft touch of my hand.

O window, of a set of five
You were target number one,
My catapult was on a roll,
Its aim had just begun.

O crackedy mirror on the wall,
O synth beside of it,
D'you remember my vanity?
Those hours of musical bliss?

And what about you, Mr. Nook?
Adorned with cobby webs,
Did you forget, those little tears
In times of loneliness?

Today I drive a Jag to work,
But when I listen to that song,
I find it's you, my little house,
It's you, where I belong.

2010-05-04T08:14:00.000+05:30

Found quite a nice bit of thought in one of my unopened mails I was skimming through; never thought those endless forwards could be any fun! Here goes,

Smile when picking up the phone. The caller will hear it in your voice!

Too lazy to change even the font size up there :P

LOST!

2009-08-31T08:20:00.000+05:30

People, I lost my right to taunt and boo at other people for their absent mindedness (esp. at a certain poor guy who's always the butt of my jokes :P) approximately 20 hours ago :| You can't really do that, not when you've forgotten around half a dozen cards and papers, a driving license, a phone book, and a thousand and a thirty bucks on a park bench...all in a stupid, tiny, insipid..ah, there's the word, wallet. The limit of forgetfulness, don't you think? Yeah, even you go on...par at least poori story toh sun lo, so you can jeer in more detail :P

The story starts on a regular dead boring day in class, a torturous test on thermal and fluid engineering (which made me think for the 113th time whether I'm doing electrical engineering or mechanical), a mentally draining lecture on the same, a canceled movie trip (because the above mentioned lecture got extended for completely stupid reasons), vain attempts to convince certain seriously worthy-of-the-mental-hospital faculty members about an even more ridiculous mini-project group formation (the details of which I'd rather not go into), and some bombed technical work, at the end of which I was positively screaming with hunger and want of humanity.

Enter- Above-mentioned poor guy. :P I'd forgotten a couple of papers I had to photocopy with him, and I also wanted a brilliant bakra to rave at about the day's disaster! ;) So we decided to meet in the evening (I had to parcel up a Cadb as bribe :|) at this garden place near his home. Half of the evening amiably passed off with me shouting at him because he forgot the papers yet again, him shouting at me because I forgot everything anyways, a blessed call on his phone (during which I polished off most of the cadb, I'd paid for it after all :D), and a perfect relationship that I coined between 'poor guy' and our TFE lecturer that scared off a couple of bats from the nearby trees. (Yes! Aint revenge sweet! :D)

The real turning point came when the park started emptying and a couple of those people who're neither here nor there but come asking for money from everywhere (yes yes, you got that right, genius! The word is eunuchs :|) came up asking for, well, money. Well, it so happened that PG (typing out poor guy every time is a pain...) had very recently just given me a substantial amount of money from his pocket and now he sat happily on the bench telling them he was as much in need of money as them! Thankfully, they left us alone without putting us to much trouble, and that was the last time I checked to see if my wallet was still there in my back pocket (I have this very peculiar habit of carrying my money in a guys' wallet, and not in a typical purse like girls do, it's so much more easier to whip it up and pay than all those complicated never-ending buckles and zippers in a purse!); but they heated up our idly hanging conversation so much that we never realized when the place closed down for the day and we got up and were by our bikes saying goodbyes, and I happily went off, thinking of how enjoyable the evening had been. And it was not till I was ringing the doorbell at my house thinking of how hungry I was, that I put my hand in my jeans back pocket, to find...nothing. I instinctively put my hand in the other pocket, and the only thing that came out was my handkerchief. Of course I couldn't lose my wallet, it had to be somewhere, I've just put it somewhere else, I told myself. I calmly checked in my bag- nothing. In my jacket pockets- nothing. Windcheater- a couple of bills, and...nothing. Went down and checked in the inside of my Scooty- nothing. Then came the panic- I didn't have my wallet on me. Why the hell was my wallet not on me?!? And where the hell was it then?? I was up the stairs and bursting into the house in two seconds flat, frantically calling up PG, who answered the call in a sleepy tone. In five minutes, I'd shaken him out of all hint of sleepiness, made him gobble down his usually-slowly and deliciously-savoured food, and begged him to rush back to the place, hoping against hope the parking lot woudntv'e closed down too.

Those intermediate twenty-or-so minutes from when he started from his house and reached there and camp-searched were some of the longest minutes of my life. Einstein would've jumped into the Pacific to quote my example for his blessed Theory of Relativity :| I couldn't go myself because my license was in my wallet, and my wallet was..poof! I couldn't sit there twiddling my thumbs because had I twiddled them any more, I would've ended up with broken fingers. I couldn't walk around because I would've definitely kicked and broken something in the house for want of kicking my own stupid self. I couldn't even trace the wallet back in my mind to where I could've lost it because I'd never checked for it after the garden incident... Poor guy wasn't poor guy for me anymore; he was my last ray of hope to somehow miraculously discovering a rich, fat, lost wallet in one of the most crowded places in town. :|

I literally pounced on the phone when it beeped again, after what seemed like a lifetime. He hadn't found it in the parking lot. The park had closed down. On an instinct, it struck that it might have just slipped out from my pocket when I had checked for it inside. He suggested checking early next morning. I suggested NOW! But the park had closed down, he insisted. I wanted to say, jump off the garden wall and go, you fool! :| If I could just see that bench once... there was nothing more in the world I wanted to see right then! Luckily, just as he was leaving (and inadvertently relegating me to a sleepless night), someone came over and asked what was going on. Turned out there was a tiny gangway out of the park, apart from the main gate. I was ready to fly to the place! PG went off into the dark (cursing probably). He was giving me live updates on the phone. It was funny and stupid and terrorizing all the time. I couldn't just help dreading the moment when he'd reach the bench and find nothing and my tiny ray of hope would be blown off. I wanted him to reach there and not reach there at the same time! Nothing on the path, he said. My heart twanged like a giant elastic band. I'm near the bench. My heart was in my mouth. Two minutes of silence, and then a reluctant voice, 'I've seen under, over and all around the bench, anu! It's not there! You've lost it I guess...'; and suddenly, my heart was not there at all. There you go, I told myself. Congrats for being the biggest pea brain in town, girl :| My hunger had died. I thanked him for all the trouble and was about to set the phone down when there came a strangled 'Wait!'; couple of quick footsteps later, there was a huge 'Found it! I was checking around the wrong bench! It was beneath the one next to it, the one where we sat on!!' Poor guy seemed like some heavenly angel then! I vowed never to make fun of him again (let's see how many hours my vow holds on :P) Rest ahead is the usual story, 'take care of your belonging's and 'thank you's and light rebukes and a hearty, relieved laugh at the end of it all; and needless to say, I ate and slept very well last night :)

All said and done, instincts and prayers and mind-power are some things, man. They might be baseless in science and logic, but maybe that's just because we still haven't been able to discover the trivia behind them. Or maybe, I'm just stupid, and trying to find an excuse for my stupidity ;)

'Wall'ing off for now!

Fue the Flu!

2009-08-22T03:03:00.000+05:30

Man! Even I want to go and watch Kaminey and then brog (brag on the blog :P) in full kaminey iftyle about its brilliance and the way I got all its twists and turns and the portrayal and go ooh! and aah! all over the famed charlie lingo! I've read at least 3 complete reviews on blogworld in the 15 minutes of internet access I've gotten today till now. Everyone around doing that and me stuck at home is so not fair! Grr! Bloody airborne pigs. Made me go around to 3 cinema houses today, only to see them all deserted. Someone just go sue(r) the fwine flu, will you? :(

TO B.E. OR NOT TO B.E.

2009-06-26T11:15:00.000+05:30

Question (by a very agitated old man, in a very agitated little tone, to a bunch of friends, yours truly included): What do you intend to be, engineers, or clerks?

Answer (by a very amused AB, the most outspoken in the group): We prefer being clerks, Sir, because Indian engineers are nothing but roadside mechanics. [:D]

Reference: "Indian engineers are merely roadside mechanics" -Kiran Karnik, President of NASSCOM, Feb 15, 2005

The world will never be the same once you've seen it through the eyes of...

2009-06-24T01:57:00.000+05:30

...Forrest Gump.

Watched it a couple of days ago (thanks to an insistent friend). A Tom Hanks-starrer from the middle 90s. At first glance, the 6 Oscars that the movie clinched would seem a wash over. Put in one line, the movie is the most non-happening one you'd have ever caught. It was only while looking up the Vietnam War did I learn that it was one of the stormiest and most meaningful phases in American history. But not for Gump. The filmmaker enthrallingly manipulates historical footage to accidentally present Gump at many significant events of the time, and many because of his own actions. Even though he doesn't realize their significance. He gets to meet the President three times, he's the man who exposes the Watergate scandal, he's at the school doors when Governor George Wallace tries to get some Negroes into a white school, and so on and so forth.

The movie is about one simple man's journey through life. Surprised? The people around him dictate his life, but not so. He's stupid, but not so, naive, still, not so. The only times he ever loses control is when he thinks Jenny's being misbehaved with. His ability to run like the wind gets him inducted into the college football team, where he excels; post-college graduation sees him in the army, where he displays unnerving valour, rushing into the for(r)est countless times to rescue his fellow men, he excels again; war-wounded, he unexpectedly has a tryst with ping-pong, follows the first and last line he's ever known about ping-pong 'Never, ever, take your eye off the ball', and excels again. The only things he ever knows about shrimps are the never-ending delicacies that can be prepared from them, from his best friend Bubba in the army, but he becomes shrimp boat captain when his friend dies and, well, excels again.

So what's special about Forrest? Regardless of his intelligence, he has learnt to discover simple truth in life, that all the others around him miss. A struggling Lt. Dan stares on helplessly as Forrest, with superhuman strength, tows him away from death. He loses his mind when he sees his legs being amputated and blames Forrest for this miserable fate of his. He feels every one has a destiny, and his was to die a hero, not to lead a crippled dependent life. But years after, when he's Forrest's first mate on his shrimp boat, he realizes (just as we ourselves do) what Forrest taught him. To keep living life, at all costs. Forrest doesn't suffer humiliation, because he doesn't know the meaning of it. He's not afraid of death, so he can snatch himself (and his loved ones) out of it. He listens to others, but chooses his own. What makes it misleading is that most of the times, he doesn't want to have any particular choice of his own.
Forrest's specialty lies in his simplicity itself.

He lives in a world that derides him as stupid but, as Mrs Gump says, "stupid is as stupid does", and in this movie it's the other characters who seem to engage in acts of relentless and tragic idiocy. All through this Forrest is the constant: intent on doing the right thing. In this movie it's not Forrest that's retarded; it's the rest of the world.

The acting is strong, the narrative is compelling enough and its semi-documentary style direction is consistent and provides clarity and pace. The movie leaves one intensely aware that many of our problems are because of our higher intellect, which, ironically, makes us know what we're missing, and in turn, compels us to crave for it. Imagining a world where the best-intentioned half-wit could pop up at opportune moments in history, winning hearts, amassing a fortune, becoming famous, is tempting. Sadly, the world today belongs to those who have screwed over someone else to get there - and that isn't Forrest, he's too nice a guy.

WHY

2009-06-21T10:52:00.000+05:30

...is it that when you sit down to write random thoughts, you never get a single one, no matter how hard you try to extract them from your snooker of a mind?

...does your intellectual rationalization of pain stay only till you are not left alone with yourself?

...does power make it feel deliciously content for people possessing it to wield it, just for the sake of wielding it?

...does your strongest point let you down in the most unexpected of places, but probably where it's quite verily needed?

...can people never live up to what they preach?

...do they preach?

...does there have to be a substantial difference between public opinion and professional?

...do your friends' takes on you matter, over your own? Or, do they?

...do you lose all known power of communication when...(Wait! Is that what's happening to me right now?)

...does having lunatic thoughts that you know no one could know you're having give you insane pleasure?

If you had to choose between Innovation and Joshi Vadewale, what would it be?

P.S. The privacy and limitedness of the last question are such that its technomics won't make more than a handful of people start. And even those who did might just give it the slip.
PPS: Those who weren't meant to get the last question can ignore the PS too.

The Mathematician

2009-06-20T02:10:00.000+05:30

Today, I happened to come across a post about JVK ('the legendary pune engineering graphics guy', as the author says :D) as I was blog-hopping, and the only person who came to my mind when I read that last tribute-rendering line 'miss those classes' was another legendary coaching class guy, N.M. Kulkarni.
You wouldn't find a cutter Puneite who doesn't know about NM, and you'd rarely find people who haven't attended his classes, most of them would probably tell you with a regretful face how they couldn't be under the wing of the great NM because they stayed in some far flung area and couldn't find means of transport. And you thought you'd never see a day when you'd see students falling over each other to attend classes :|

The guy taught Mathematics. 11th and 12th grade. He didn't teach it, he literally etched it onto people's minds. His trademark ishtyle of pronouncing zero as jheero, his unique quality of seamlessly transforming complex calculus formulae into self-made tunes, the way he banged the front door (if you could call it front, it was more of in the middle of the room :P) on the faces of guys who came running in late, the dreaded pointer that fell like lightning on potent mischief-makers, all the memories mesmerise! All the back-benchers had 2 traditional brand names: 'chaavat', and 'dambrat', the closest word in English would be naughty, I suppose. Which doesn't come anywhere close to conveying the relish with which he used to utter the word, at least 7 times in every batch. I was lucky enough to be in the cream of batches, M*, which I later on realized contained the most scheming of people, it goes according to the ancient law which says, the more intelligent you are, the more the urge to do more cunning mischief :P

Probably the only guy on earth whom God grants more than 24 hours in a day. What else would you be inclined to think when you see someone managing six 12th batches and two 11th batches every day (with extra timings for almost every batch on Sundays) round the year, each batch that went on for a minimum of 1.5 hours, apart from online night coaching classes to enthusiastic students across the states? And this was 2 years ago, i don't have any idea to what 2 digit number it must have increased to today! The guy eats, drinks, walks, talks, plays and sleeps maths. Each of his dialogues are straight from Incredibleland; 'chaaaaavat!!', 'Khanvilkar, distance formula sang!', 'ata apan thode sundry sums sodvuya...they're not very difficult, but they're the sums examiners will ask in exam, so we'll call them sundry, kay bolnar apan tyanna? sundry!!' (this was our introduction to sundry sums :P), 'thiiiiiiikay!' (where we all used to yell along with him, the most awesome style of ending a lecture I've ever seen till date), Each batch contained a minimum of 200 people, every one in the class had fixed places, 10 people cramped onto every bench meant for, well, 10 if you sit the way we used to sit, 6 or 7 if you want to sit in a way so that you'd be able to recognize your body organs after 90 minutes. And then when Miss Electricity used to ditch us during the hottest part of the day, Namya defended the situation only the way he could: 'Tumhi ikde shiknyasathi alela ahaat mulanno, ani shikshan he kathin paristhititach hote, mi tumhala ithe mast AC ani basnyasathi sofa lavun devu shakto, pan mag upayog kaay??' The way we used to shout 'Walve, walve!!' (the guy who used to teach physics in the opposite building), and the booing at the feeble attempts of a meagre 50 people trying to shout back 'NM' from there, and then his mock-serious line 'asa nav nahi ghyaycha konacha...tya walvencha ani apala kahi sambandh ahe ka!'; to the occasional straddler, that affectionate 'tula sangu ka tu kasa ahes? goonda pravrutticha..' :P, the twinkle in his eyes after demonstrating how to solve a difficult sum, and then, 'hya sumchya pudhe tick mark karun liha, YENARACH!', 'ha sum khup sopa ahe, pan mi sangto, ha sum tumhi chukavnarach!' (lol), and then, when he's too much in the mood, 'Aaj apla xxx kay chan distoy nahi..', and then looking at some girl in the corner..'kay mhanata yyy..khara aahe ki nahi..' and then the mischievous laughter, and the class goes all oooh and aaah; 'mi roj midnight la yeun problems lihito boardvar', once he comes into the class and says 'I have two pet dogs', and while everyone is staring, he continues 'their names are derivation and integration' (!!), then during Diwali, 'When the world will celebrate the festival of lights, we shall celebrate the festival of I.N.T.E.G.R.A.T.I.O.N', his imaginative punishments, his sudden outbursts of philosophy, the outrageous anger on certain other (but rare) occasions, cracking non-veg jokes without blinking an eye in front of a 200 strong teenager crowd, followed by 'Majhya ani tumchyamadhe shevti farakach kay ahe!' in that laughing tone; the hours of standing beneath the building chitchatting with friends, till a frustrated NM shouts out from atop to vacate immediately; I miss all of it, ALL OF IT.

It wasn't just a coaching class, it was a place for refreshment. He could be as strict as a teacher should be, and at the same time could effortlessly extract humour out of any statement. True, he's a bit crazy, but then, all geniuses are :D Nothing deterred him, or his faithful students, neither the incessant complaints from the surrounding societywallahs, nor the threatening looks from his wife when she came to visit during 5 minute breaks between consecutive batches, neither holidays, nor diseases, nothing. He was a man for his students. The huge ever-increasing, never-ending queues for admission under his wing year after year stand testimony. I can go on and on and on forever about this guy (anyone who's been taught by him will!), and he's probably the only reason why I would want to go back to my 12th. Any student who gets into junior college and has Maths as a subject should definitely attend his classes; in fact, volunteer for the subject just so you can attend his classes. He'll breathe Maths into you as effortlessly as, well, breathing. It's something I just can't endeavour to put into words, you have to be there to experience it, it's the stuff of legend, the days that'll make you go 'Gosh!' when you recollect them.
Thank you, N.M. Sir.

The Name Game

2009-06-16T21:07:00.000+05:30

I recently noticed that I automatically associated almost all names of people to a particular nature. Like, Nikita meant plump, Ameya meant full of attitude, Tejas meant fair. I didn't know where this came from, but coming across a girl named Nikita who was waif-thin made me feel surprised for a bit. Now, I realize that these preconceived associations come from long back, from my schooldays. School being the first platform where you start socialising and making friends, staying 12 years with the same people had sort of given their name an identity, rather than the other way round. I was so used to Nikita being fat that even after breaking out of school, the name Nikita always meant plumpness, and anything otherwise initially felt strange, if not outright impossible, just like thinking of a subdued Ameya was like thinking of Sachin Tendulkar without a bat.
Fortunately for my current friends, not many have the same names that my school friends had. But those who are unlucky enough, shall continue to be the silent butt of jokes in my mind! :P

'Phone'menal

2009-06-15T22:15:00.000+05:30

My friends will tell you I keep swinging my mobile phone in my hand almost always unless I'm driving, and more often than not, gravity embellishes its presence as plastic meets mud with a dull thud. But this incident hardly commands any interest in the circle anymore; the only thing that happens further on is, I bend over, pick up the phone, dust it off, and continue the swinging, along with the conversation that I was having with the people around. Apart from these highly frequent ground-cell meetings, my cell phone has once fallen off a moving vehicle (at 40kmph), tumbled down thrice from the tops of tekdis, plonked into muddy water at the panshet dam (unintentional) and soapy water in the shower (intentional), and has had curd and lukewarm coffee spilled over it (which I'd washed off using liberal amounts of water), and yet, it continues to display remarkable perfectness in all of its limited functionalities, except mixing up text message contents into one another, creating funny combinations.

Congratulations, Nokia, for bringing out such a destruction-resistant mobile phone, for making me choose it 2 years ago, for making me despise losing things on purpose and for making me not absent-minded and so not losing it not-on-purpose, and for ruining my chances of getting a more envied model for the next 2 years at a minimum.

Quote of the Day

2009-06-11T22:23:00.000+05:30

"Maths is so strange, yet so logical!"
-My 14 year old brother, after a gruelling session of 9th grade maths (during vacation time).

The Dark 'Knights'

2009-05-19T14:00:00.000+05:30

This is what is called the 'never say die' spirit. Or something like that.

KKR v/s CSK at Centurion, 18/05/09
It wasn't a match that turned heads. Wasn't one that would make even the tail-lines of the TOI. It's just what you can do even if it doesn't greatly matter whether you do it or not. Yes, even with a lazily-filled stadium booing at you.

The Kolkata Knight Riders threw the match into fire and then snatched it out of the lapping flames. They needed just one dark horse, and they got it in the form of Bradley Hodge. I'm not particularly fond of the team (though it's being owned by SRK), but yesterday's match sure made me eat half the cushions in the hall! I just happened to read a match preview two days ago that declared, Is Kolkata lucky enough to win against Chennai? FTI, if KKR could've broken out of their notorious reputation of throwing away comfortably winnable matches in the last over just a bit earlier, they actually would have made the semis. The guys were a lot clumsy (a trait that cost Hussey yesterday), but what made this chase near-perfect was that it wasn't just some madness coming off. McCullum and Hodge selected the bowlers they were going to target, took it easy against Murali, and later found a Saha to prop up the main act.

They played a little for their pride, and a bit more for coming back into the next season positively, and although it rarely looked like they played to win, they did that handsomely against the second best team in the running!

Cheers, as usual!

To all ye sloths - The queen is here

2009-02-08T23:56:00.000+05:30

They always ask me how do I manage to make through the tiny gangway sandwiched between the park and the society hall with my bike (Scooty Pep+), when better riders refrain from doing so, for fear of ramming into one of the walls.

Though attributing it to my miraculous sense of balance would've been more dignified, the actual answer is extremely less so.
I just am too lazy to leave hold of the throttle.

MY HANDWRITING ROXXX! :D

2009-02-01T04:44:00.000+05:30

Rocks full on!! Can't expect anything sleeker, sexier and more mature. And if I xerox..err, photocopy it, I would sit drooling over the print till it got dissolved. It's amazing how photocopies make even the most disgusting of handwritings look quite a bit decent. Maybe, it's the ‘printed’ effect. Or maybe, the pre-conceived idea that printed work looks more dignified and professional than handwritten ones. Whatever. I just pray I don't eat up my notebook one day! (On second thoughts, it won't matter much :P)

As a child, my parents used to sign my calendar or homework (always complete, the author would like to mention that she was a very obedient child, quite unlike her adult version), or write my class teacher a sick note, or a wrong-dabba (meaning anything other than poli bhaji) note, I always used to wonder how they succeeded in conceiving such a carefree, casual, half-the-time-unreadable-to-me-but-miraculously-interpretatory-to-the-teachers (or maybe they just faked it!) handwriting. Now, I know.

Curiously, my own handwriting used to change every time. Every minute. Every line. At the top of the notebook, it used to be geometrically at the middle of the two lines provided, but touching neither. And there, it used to be cursive. (The author claims that she still has her Geography notebook of grade 6, with neat little notes on Zulu dances and Assamese stilt houses and the snowy Taiga and Tundra regions, as a souvenir to her volatile handwriting.) Then, quarter-way through, I used to get a sudden inspiration to go print (the all separate letters style). The sentences used to stay exactly between the two lines, but the letters could get free and stretch their limbs a bit; the legs of the ‘p’s and ‘q’s lengthened, the ‘g’s and ‘y’s got their curled tails stiff and straightened (how about a dog? :P), the dot of the ‘i’ got hollowed out, the ‘o’ went from clockwise conception to anti-clockwise, and some completely cursive letters like ‘f’ and ‘k’ and ‘r’ got image makeovers.

But, again, all this held on just for another 7 lines. My pen remained dissatisfied. The last few lines were a mixture of cursive and print. The most user-friendly handwriting till date. Efficient and time-saving. The haven of a lazy person :D Depending upon the word, the ‘s’ would sometimes be print, sometimes cursive, at other times, a cursive version of print. The ‘t’ would sometimes have its cross extended, sometimes it’s a**. And after all of this, ultimately, the next page of my notebook never used to resemble any other page in it! My mum used to say, I’d be caught one day under charges of forgery. My ready retort: I’d show them such mind-boggling on-the-spot samples of multiple handwritings that they’d pull their pen out! (Bad pun, I guess. Err…sorry. Pen. :P)

But all the same, my writing used to be elaborate and pearly and rotund and neat. Y’know. A different sort of neat. Meaning, it looked manipulated sometimes. Carefully planned out and scrutinized handwriting. Although it was not. And I hated that illusion.

Then, in an effort to make it seem more natural, there came a stage where I became too lazy to write. The writing became too short and stubby. The necks of long letters became so short that the ‘h’ started resembling ‘n’ and ‘d’ got mistaken for ‘a’. For the first time in history, I lost marks in my English examination for SPELLING MISTAKES!! I was so scandalized, I came home and cried. :|

I decided, that’s that. Time for some serious business. I needed to shut out all the namby-pamby wishy washy nonsense of neat, clean, scratch-free handwriting (Although the author does not expect anyone who knows her to believe, she wants to make known that she used to religiously tear out pages that contained as much as a single scratch with a slide-rule, and write them all over again. Forget assignments or projects, normal class-work notebooks got that sort of treatment :| ), and be natural. A few cuts won’t take your life. And neither can you afford to write every alphabet so flowery and grandiloquent every time. It would only be so much before it started deteriorating or I lost patience. And it was seriously coming in the way of my speed factor. So, I let it go. Let my inhibitions go. Break free. And I realized something wonderful.

That when you do something without worry, and unnecessary tension, you probably do it the best way you can do it. My scratches dramatically decreased! To almost one in ten pages! I stopped worrying about completing journal questions and assignment essays in draft form before making them fair. I inked them in directly. And fared out top every where. Around 9th grade, I realized that I wrote more comfortably with a ball-point pen. Fountain pens always left patches of ink round my nails. And my fingers looked permanently painted. And the Headmistress found it the perfect time to reveal (although reluctantly; she believed in water-based liquid ink and only water-based liquid ink) that we were allowed to give our Boards in non water-based liquid ink. So I switched to balls. Eeks, pens, I meant. Erm, never mind. :D

Professors always swore by my writing. Now, they went berserk! In fact, our Hindi miss, Miss Sonali, even went to the extent of tagging it prernadayak (inspirational). I was embarrassed. [Note: If you’ve actually got through till this point and such level of self-centered naïveté, then the author strongly recommends you to plough on.]

Experimentations led to the conclusion that black ink suited my writing more. Lent it quality, and a kind of sleekiness. Or maybe it was my mindset and there was nothing of the sort. But I’d learnt not to worry about that, just do what my mind says is right. I never looked back.

Nowadays, almost all my notes are in black, though I have one blue Parker refill as a keepsake. (more so, for emergency situations like exams!) My writing has a sort of casual messiness to it. Joint somewhere, crooked somewhere, completely random. The way it suits me best. People say, a person’s handwriting reflects his/her personality, among so many other things. People also say my handwriting is lovely. I don’t know what exactly to make of those two statements (since I don’t think I’m that lovely in person), but I feel that, every aspect of a person (may it be as small as his way of tying his shoelaces or as big as giving a presentation) that makes others stop and think (even for a second), is worth nurturing and developing. It might not make an inch worth of difference, but who knows? Maybe, tomorrow, the ill-informed author might just get preferred for a PR post in Siemens (at which point, she rushes forward to assure that she has no personal contacts or relatives or friends or friends' friends or grudges in relation to the said organization), just because the interviewer was a person who believed that handwriting reflects personality and who found her writing lovely. :)

Knock on wood.

How three misplaced screws can screw you up equally well...

2009-01-19T15:35:00.000+05:30

One long canvas bag.

Three forgotten screws.

Biting cold.

Saturn.

Murphy's Law.

The insomniac author, for once, has all of the time (because of the insomnia), but no inclination to elaborate. Wildly formulated theories are welcome; persistent grilling is not.

Yours threadbarely,

me.

:O

2009-01-18T04:55:00.000+05:30

Star parties always hold different meaning (not exactly; I couldn't think of any other flattering introductory line :P), especially when you're gonna be towing your own telescopes! Dunno why the one taking place later this day made me skim back to my last post on star parties. And rather unexpectedly, I realized something completely unrelated to stars. That, till very recently, I still wrote mostly for others. But now, I write only for myself. The conventional style's breaking away, the urge to write goody-goody falsely flowery things getting replaced by the satisfaction gained by twisting off-the-rocker things into catching shenanigans. Calibrating nonsense actually requires a sackful of sense :D

Hopefully, I'm improving.

P.S.: This almost turns out to be the shortest post in the history of the blog.
(To self:) Be ashamed.

Why do I DON'T?

2009-01-09T22:52:00.000+05:30

Pre-read note: The over thinking syndrome that the author keeps catching/that keeps catching the author at intervals, followed by frustrated, flimsy reproductions in Microsoft's Office. Don't bother to bear with it.

It's a question asked out of a pure, overwhelming feeling of unable to perform. A loser feeling. Out of a desperate need to be accepted and acknowledged and admired and taken notice of. Of being 'wanted', if I dare to sound cliche.

It's a shameless emotion. As if you are allowing yourself to be relegated to just what others think and understand or can think and understand about you. It's utterly shameless, but still everyone gets that, somewhere, sometime. Some, many times, in this world where you try so many times to live only for yourself, by yourself, but don't succeed. Y'know, just like, sort of victimising yourself in your own imagination, and then braving it out to a glorious end.

A guy who knows equally well as his colleagues, probably even more, but doesn't have the confidence to place it in the open. 'Confidence comes from knowledge', somehow, falls out of place in this case. Language problems. Or intimidating friends. Encouraging group, but crushed, buried deep within self-confidence. Inferiority complexes galore, whatever little he speaks gets stubbed too, in time. Psychological inertia. Keep on moving into the dumps.

I've always thought that emotions are more potentially lethal weapons than Gold AK 47s, just like the mind is stronger than the physique. If you lose control, the 47s at least leave remnants.

The worst has passed, you think?

No.

Contentment in that very state.

A person who says main aisa hi hoon, and not main aisa kyon hoon? (Heartfelt apologies, if anyone actually managed to read to this point. Couldn't bear leaving that line out :D)

A person who thinks I don't, but not Why do I don't?

How long can Short be? Or should it be..vice-versa?

2008-12-03T05:25:00.000+05:30

08/10/2008

07.55 am

Place: "River"side, The Boat Club, C.O.E.P

Theme: Pauus (Rain)

Work: Write non-crappy stuff (supposed to be written 2 days ago)

Author: A confused girl with a cartload of submissions

The Consequence: Two raggedy pages (with the circuit diagram of a band-reject filter on the back of one of them) in HB pencil, as underneath.

The light shone on in parity,

The drums went on a spree,

The drop atop, 'Where should I drop?

Where would I like to be?'

One trickled in a farmland crack,

Burrowed and hollered through,

Worms, lost seeds, decaying stuff,

No earth to seep into.

One rushed into, the river blue

its icy depths aquiver,

At threshold poised, the air rejoiced,

When life bevied the giver.

One drop, unfortunate, it dropped

on a poor arithmetic journal,

The '8' went '3', the drop broke free,

Messed up a cursed internal.

One landed dang! on top of skin,

It was a little hand,

Bereft, it mused, 'This is my end',

In seconds, I'll bite the sand!

The hurl it knew would come in time

somehow did never come,

What came instead, were fellow drops,

Unknowns and long-lost chums.

They hugged and tugged in wonderment

as the hand cupped 'em together,

And gently laid them on a leaf

Withered to vein and tether.

The vein bloomed to a pulsing lane,

The whites gave way to greens,

Two eyes watched on, the (re)union

Of parched smithereens.

Behold the fall! No time at all!

From pain and dying gory,

Stood life with dancing droplet crowns,

In all its shining glory!

For though it seems (or does not seem)

awful poetry (or prose),

Rain does do magic, spell-binding!

When a bud becomes a rose.

Why do I remember someone saying writing is a work of leisure? :|

Quick Tales - the Results

2008-12-03T03:52:00.000+05:30

Here they are!

Congratulations to all the winners! And a good job, organisers.

A cheer for the time taken to comment on almost every story and pointing out where each one worked (or as the case might be, bombed).

And now that I know I use more type-styling than type (which is a shocking achievement in itself), I'm gonna be the next one vying! :D

The Scores.

Quick Tales - the ShortList

2008-11-03T01:55:00.000+05:30

* tone of surprise, eyebrows raised *

Why! Hello Blog!

* /tone of surprise, eyebrows raised *

That's more than two months out of the offing.

And this is a blog-saving post. :|

Well, the saying goes,

The prospect of unpaid publicity arouses even the laziest.

Or maybe, I coined it right now. Never mind.

One of my major motivations (probably the only one) to take part in QUiCK TALES, a Flash Fiction writing contest jointly organised by Caferati and LiveJournal, was, the beginning of my engineering mid-semester exams coincided with the fateful last date of the contest; and I just had to do anything, anything other than studies :|

Theme: Journal (in any which way that you can interpret it)

Word limit: Not more than 500 words.

Mine motive was pure time-pass, but I learnt a few days ago, to shock, and speechlessness, that both the entries that I had submitted somehow found their way into the final 100 shortlisted ones! And one of the prizes, The People's Choice Prize depends on junta ka vote; bole toh, you people need to go and read those stories and rate them on a scale of 1 to 10, and they'll calculate an average score on Doomsday.

The poll is open only to LJ members, so you need to register on LiveJournal to rate. Sign up over here, it's just a 30 seconds ka jhamela, and you can forget all about the account after you've rated the stories

Here go mine, to hum and blackcurrant rum (:D)

#683 and #738

Just go and read the stuff!

Feedback would be greatly appreciated. (Mail, blog, or journal :D)

Don't worry! You won't be inflicted with more than 5 minutes of my writing. The word limit left no chance for the scrollbar!

And of course, goes without ado, the rest of the shortlisted stories.

Poll closes in a few weeks!

Mood: Shock, wearing off

To know or not to know

2008-09-01T19:45:00.000+05:30

He who knows and knows that he knows, is a wise man- seek him.

He who knows and knows not he knows, is asleep- wake him.

He who knows not and knows he knows not, he is a child- teach him.

He who knows not and knows not he knows not- SHUN HIM.

* no need to explicitly mention that he's a fool [all related expletives], a featherbrained nincompoop [supplementary expletives], and he can commit suicide by belly flopping into the river Mula (or for that matter, any water body; Mula gets special mention because the part of Mula behind our college is just more potent as regards inviting death by multiple causes, like drowning, clawed frog injuries, automatic choking, hyacinth-strangling, etc. in order of increasing probability) *

Alright. I know I just can't resist putting random crap completely irrelevant to the point of my post. But most of the times, it's because many essentially-related-to-the-post arguments crop up in my mind just when I'm actually writing. And then it feels unfair to be writing without expounding them; it feels incomplete. So I just have to include them, you understand. No wonder I always end up with unimaginably huge posts almost every time. But atleast, not this time. No.

So, the lines above are part of a Chinese/Arabian proverb. [Multiple sources – multiple answers] Chuck the origin. Just concentrate on line 1. There are times when try as you might, you just don’t find the right words to express yourself, but you are rock-convinced that you’re correct. It feels like the peak of inexpressibility. And then, when you get the words finally, it’s a crash of delight! That was exactly what I experienced when I chanced upon this line. “He who knows and knows that he knows”. Cognizance. Awareness. Of your own capabilities. To be immensely aware of your intelligence. To be knowing that you’re capable of so very much, vis-a-vis the rest of the world around you! It feels wonderful! Heady sometimes. [I know; as I have felt those pleasurable shivers coursing through me so often :) ]

But, very subtle lines separate being aware, being outspoken, being outspoken at the right times, and being explosive. Modesty is a quality; but be too reticent, and you’ll lose a chance one too many. Be audacious enough to gather a fish-market and pounce upon any and every topic to parade your “awareness”, that’s what is colloquially termed “Attitude”. I’d like to term it, more behaviourally- Pining to be the centre of attention. It’s something on the lines of over-estimating yourself; sort of contradictory ain’t it? You get carried away by your own idea of your abilities (people actually start convincing themselves that things they’re unable to do are not worth doing! :| ) and start thinking you are incomparable. In short, you get a superiority complex. The ploy might hold temporarily, but in the end, you’ll be up for the grabs.

Being aware, and being coolly confident about it is what it’s all about. "You know that you know" should make you more humble than proud. That's real 'knowing'! Everyone has their limits. [They must. Imagine, you’re the top in everything in the world! Scary! What would you do now for the rest of your life? Sit and eat peanuts? I’d actually consider suicide :| ] And you must be aware of them too; so that you can better yourself. You have to accept and respect better talent when you meet it. Never under-estimate anyone, and never over-estimate yourself. Make sure that you do fly sky-high, but with a fully functional parachute.

In short (that is, my idea of short :) ), definitely know that you know, but also know what you don’t know; and know precisely how much you know, and let the others know that ‘know’ing in a slightly demure manner. You might be bursting to brag, but that’ll seem more like forcing others to know that you know, which defeats the purpose after all.

More practically, it might just, just, seem like a variant of case 4, whereby people might just follow the advice the mysterious Chinese/Arabians gave.

SHUN YOU.

Memories

2008-08-20T02:43:00.000+05:30

Did I ever tell you?

My balcony and bedroom windows are magical. They serve as timeless time machines. Whenever I look through them (which is quite a lot always, considering that I’m inevitably jobless for 364 days of the non-leap year and oh no! the 365th day is not my birthday! It’s just a random day on which I feel like working :) ), I don’t see the beautiful lotus-encased temple that peaks right up to it. I don’t see the unique mischiefs the brilliant boys come up with in the garden. Sad, in a sense. It would’ve reminded me of my younger days; those chaos-triggering, window-smashing football and dodge-ball sessions, spectacle-splintering appa rappi with a tennis ball, those bashes, climbing trees, stealing tamarind, playing cards all night long....and I used to be the Queen of Challenge!( For those of you who're unaware (sod you!), it's a card game where people play their cards wrong-side up with a declaration and you can challenge their cards' worth upon your discretion. And the guy who loses all his cards first wins! ) I could stack six cards beneath my topmost one and pass it off as ONE card! And I would do it again and again and again! And no one's got wind of it till now. :D *sigh* I don’t see corduroys, I’m hard put noticing Mercs [yes, the ones which have Benz for a last name] making inexplicable appearances in our humble society; in fact, I once shooed a rare cormorant off our sill, mistaking it to be a common sparrow, and I still had the blessed notion till my bro next-room came bawling his head off that he was just trying to keep the creature still enough to take a pic, when yours truly, in all kindness, frightened it out of its feathers. So much for his bird dropping. Errr, watching. ;)

What I notice, instead, are only memories. An avalanche of them. Each one leads to another, and I have absolutely no idea as to where I might’ve landed within the next 15 minutes! I might be in my fifth grade, whispering frantically into tanny’s ears in english class, for all I know. :D

Fascinating how a window for looking out into the world inevitably turned into a window for looking inside myself. Countless are the times I recollect standing there, contemplating on lost times, on future prospects, on pre-examination blues, on impending assignments and intricate (the-ones-i-know-are-materialisable-only-in-the-wildest-of-my-dreams sort of) plans on how to deal with them; on friends, and friendship, and the rough crew that it tows on deck! With amazing delicacy. Those grills know the clutch of my nails when I'm angry; the continuous string of punches and my own inevitable retaliatory 'ow's when I'm vehement; the washing silence of solemnity when I'm trying to indulge in crude astronomy; the warmth of my tears when I'm totally down; the caress, the tenderness of a kiss when I'm oh-so-happy; the tragedy of supporting my weight when I'm exultant and completely over-excited and out of control. So much so, that I just can't help smiling fondly at the window when I pass by it. It feels more than a framework of metal. More..alive.

Countless are the conversations I’ve had with God, with nothing in between him and myself but the iron bars of my window. Pouring my heart out to that paramount helper and sympathizer, raving and raging, whining, apologizing, promising, wishing earnestly, asking for just-one-more-time opportunities, but ultimately, being immensely grateful that I am NOT an atheist. That I have such a being (whether or not for real, doesn’t matter) with whom I can behave any damn which way I want. It's not as much the existence, as the belief, and the faith, that fuels things.

And rain assists going down memory lane. Gives it concomitance. There’s no smell so sweet and rejuvenating as the one that rises from wet, raw mud! The essence of life when the soft pitter-patter of water soaks the parched earth. The mien of water gradually seeping through the loam, as it drinks it up thirstily, as the dried-up cracks fill up and coalesce; as the plants, fresh and green from the first rains, sway jubilantly, rebelliously. As the earth celebrates. As life begets life.

For some reason, or for no reason at all, it talks of freedom, and happiness, of a sudden spurt of unexpectant generosity; of contentment, emanating within and without, and a thrill of joy, of a whole new reason to live! And most inviting of all, memories. Just like soulful music. If your eyes and ears lead you down memory lane, your smell and touch lead you down more so, but with the realization, the cognizance, that you are fortunate enough to be passing through your memories, to be reliving them, not once, not twice, but as many times as you wish to!

Isn’t the ability God-given?!!

My mum begs to differ. She says that wallowing in the past isn’t worth it. Ruffling up old memories, spending hours of precious time ruminating on them, bursting your head open upon how life would’ve been if I’d done a particular thing in a particular different way, and stuff is goose-stuff. Only losers do it. Those who can’t, and don’t know how to move on, those who are miserably stuck in the quagmire of their past and do not wish to rise out of it. And naturally, she’s always on a lookout to tell me off whenever she catches me anywhere within a metre of the window, with a glazed look in my eyes and an out-of-the-context expression on my face. :l

Actually, I’ve sincerely tried putting myself in two minds about the point in question, in an attempt to do full justice to my mum’s point of view, but I’ve never quite even sustained the argument, let alone overcome my own self! I mean, however demoralizing they might be, what would a human be without his memories?? Every person has moments in life that he cherishes. Moments so purifyingly delightful and fulfilling that he just wants them be. Forever. No one has had sadness and failure at every point of life. Sure, NO ONE. Even the saddest, most depressed person in the world, (if you are close enough, and if you appear interested enough,) would tell you the most lovely moments of his life. Probably with that long-lost, hungry look in his eyes.

And that’s what makes memories worth it.

Wallowing in self-pity and losing confidence due to old remembrances doesn’t do. Deriving courage from them, from the very fact that you are strong enough to pass through the leanest phases of your life unscathed, and moving on, does. After all, memories are, inadvertently, a mark of your existence. Evidence of your very being. Your life. Your history.

They are cunningly double-edged though. Make sure that, if, ever, they blow you off your feet, into the past, it is only and only for strengthening your foothold in the present!

As for me, I still keep on discovering newer faces to reflection! [bad pun, I know!] And if anyone has any qualms, to them: Cogito ergo sum! :P

Oh, and actually, I just cannot keep from grinning broadly (whooping, to be more precise :D ) now that dad’s scrapped his grand plans of amplifying the drawing room by bringing down the wall separating it from the balcony, and full credits go to some fictitious (purely rumour-spread) blessed leakages that it might invoke in the plumbing!

I still have my window, all to myself !!! :) :) :)

P.S.: Forgive me, mum.

Life

2008-08-10T14:25:00.000+05:30

Beautifully wrapped up in the one line:

Men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever.

That’s your life for you. My life for me.

Because I am my life. And my life is me.

Errrrrr. That sounds quite lame, and weird, and a desperate attempt at poetry. But I just discovered the quaint analogy the line [from “The Brook” by Alfred Lord Tennyson] has with life and I’m reeling from the idea itself. And I turn extremely philosophical at such times. And at most of such times, I’m in no mood to elaborate. I expect my thoughts to jump out and plant themselves in others’ minds by telepathy. And at such times, if they don’t, then it’s incorrigibly irritating and I’m rock-convinced it’s just their unbelievable lack of insight and my inexpressible gain of logic. Those are the few times when I pity them. And glorify myself. And this is just such a time.

Another lame attempt, to my second year of whatever-I-came-to-do-and-whatever-I-am-doing :

Cheers to my first year,

Gone by in a pee,

Lows and lows (not highs and lows),

Bringing near-death to ME*.

Cheers to my second year

Come forth in glee,

I hope to god it’s lows and lows

But lows that get high on me**.

Here,

*ME = my academic life

**me=myself

Cheers

* SighGone *

2008-08-09T14:45:00.000+05:30

I should've looked around; rather, messed and pottered and monkeyed around with a fine-toothed comb before I talked below.

Now, I'm speechless. :|

ZERO-Equivalent

* Sigh *

2008-08-08T22:30:00.000+05:30

Today's Headline:

IITs lower cut-offs to fill seats

Second Round of Admissions For The First Time In History Of IITs

Some bits of accidental revelation:

"quotas cannot be filled because there aren't enough suitable candidates..."

'Nearly 50% of reserved seats lying vacant' *432 to be precise*

'..criminal waste of infrastructure'

"...ministry is not interested in de-reserving vacant seats..."

"...ministry wants the premiere engineering schools to dilute merit.... "

"...further bring down cutoffs to admit reserved category students..."

'HRD orders faculty quota with "immediate effect" in IITs'

And before you check the idea out, a point in concern:

The present IIT cut-off is around 180 for a general category student and 104 for a reserved category one. Which gets lowered to its 55% for the preparatory course i.e. to 57. Which'll get further lowered to dispel the empty-seat syndrome.

What's the bet the final cut-off [if it is, indeed, intended to cut off] won't come down to a zero equivalent?

Oh and by the bye, as like everywhere, why not reserve plush velvet-swathed seats for these people in heaven too?

Eye.ing the IITs

2008-07-21T10:48:00.000+05:30

Amid the hot and happening headline news about the contentious Indo-US nuke deal which has replaced the food crisis as the latest means of heated arguments amongst roadside beggars over their subah ki cutting(begged, of course) and how home lavatories are a must for politicians to contest the forthcoming elections; I was shocked by the small paragraph that the TOI had devoted 2 days ago to the margins of the front page. I mean, it was a really long time since I had seen the word education on page 1. But as I said, it was just about a 3.5 cm article. They'd tried to compensate for their unknowing lack of discretion, I suppose. :l Anyhow, here goes: As many as eight new IITs would be set up in the country during the current academic session to impart high quality technical education. And of course, no elaborations.

Being a believer myself, I ventured to do a bit of a probity probe, [the Internet, being much more considerate, yielded cause and execution] and to my astonishment, found out that the system had gone in for 7 IIMs in addition!

Understandably, the first emotion I experienced was regret, that I wasn't in a position to attempt JEE a year later. [Not in the least because I would've got into one of the prestigious schools, but because I could've boasted that I lost the rat-race by 360 seats less. Matters, see. :) ] But then, my mind registered amazement. Three of these proposed institutes, apparently, planned to initiate functioning in castaway laboratories and rented premises! The media, and consequently the public have sparked up hot debates on the most obvious point that this proposal gives rise to: the dilution of quality due to quantity. Won’t having more IITs and IIMs simply fritter the premium on quality that these institutes have? Can a mere increase in numbers guarantee a consistency in the quality of education imparted? Rather than unfocussedly increasing the IIT count, why not pump that money to improve infrastructure and faculty in the existing IITs?? And so on and so forth in all possible strings of words, citing hundreds of instances. All worth its salt. A demure interposition though. More than the quality of the education imparted to the students who get into IIT, doesn’t the quality of the students who get into IIT in the first place matter more? As a maiden venture, what was IIT designed to be? An institute, whose main objective is to pick up the crème-de-la-crème of the student herd in the world and aid them in the process of being more so. Mark it! Not any Tom, Dick and Harry. So just as the best students existing rightfully claim that they deserve to be in IIT, doesn’t IIT rightfully deserve to select only the best among the best available?

At this point in time, some people might argue that all humans are born equal and hence reserve equal rights to education in the elite group of schools. That the reason IIT should increase its intake is to provide education par excellence to the maximum possible students. I perfectly agree with the first part of the first statement. Born parity. I assure you, I was born as piercingly naked as Chetan Bhagat. Born equals. Both attended high-school and studied, more or less, the same syllabus.[I’m assuming he did.] But then, why the hell am I graduating from COEP when Bhagat graduated from IIT? : ( I suppose you get the idea. Somewhere down the line, the difference in our academic abilities, and more than that, the difference in our pedantic personalities showed up. We cease to be equals from the moment we’re born. Henceforth, our actions, abilities and choices inevitably decide our level for us. We remain equals only in the sense that we are humans.

Simply for the sake of a means of classification, let us assume that the amount of marks(obtained by a person) is a measure of one’s intelligence, since that is, by far, the only unbiased criterion of candidate-selection. [Of course, there are several notable cases in point of people being far more intelligent than what their marks show, the most remarkable case being mine :) ] Directly, and very simply, implying that a particular level of intelligence gets appreciated, and accepted, and levels below it are not. Simply because they do not deserve to be. Or because there are enough people more deserving than them. I admit, I do not deserve to be in IIT. (I deserve more. :D) There should be enough seats in IIT only for those who are QUALIFIABLE, and not for all who are there. Citing the continual increase of population as a rationale to increase the number of IITs is inexplicably hollow. IITs and IIMs are niche institutes and not shop floors. However, they are not exceptional only because they provide top-notch tutelage but because the pool of talent that they gather is top-notch in itself. They are shaping and honing it, they are manoeuvring it, not creating it. But more IITs will mean more seats to fill. Which will put students having significantly lesser capabilities on par with the ingenious ones. Which will have some very direct negative implications:

1. Where is the competition? Why would anyone study to get 99 per cent if he could get into the institute even for a paltry 80 percent? It hampers the analytical and intellectual growth of the pupil, quite the opposite of what the IIT intends isn’t it? Curbing the need to excel is probably the most cruel treatment a student can be subjected to.

2. Pushing relatively low IQ people into coping alongside the flawlessly brilliant ones is the worst that you could do to them. Smothering mediocre students with stellar education won’t do much; it will only result in grossly inefficient utilization. Of both resources, and manpower. Inferiority complexes galore; is it a surprise that the number of suicide cases registered by the nationwide IITs only increases with each passing year?

3. And with the tight compromisations on coaching faculty, the net outcome 4 years hence would be [provided they manage to survive] engineers who’ll probably earn their bread and butter but who wouldn't outlast two hoots in a competitive environment like, say, the international market. The premises of the IIT would be transformed into commonplace manufacturing facilities churning out an x number of average, unremarkable professionals.

Or in short, we return to the same point in question, but with a substantial variation.

Dilution of quality, not because of absolute quantity, but because of inept, raw, undeserving quantity. And the only way we can pull ourselves out of this mess is by starting right down at the beginning. Right from KG, inculcate within you the will to learn and grow yourself. Keep a guard on your own quality as a student; sterling institutions are bound to follow. Do not whine that a student who got 90 per cent last year got into IIT but you couldn’t get into it this year with the same per cent. That’s because the value of 90 per cent was appreciable enough till last year, but not NOW. “Survival of the fittest” alludes a tad too well to today’s world.

I believe the number of IITs should be increased, or for that matter, any other institute should be upgraded ONLY if there is an increase of intelligent population. The system should focus on elevating the masses to the IITs, and not depreciating the IITs to the masses. More than 40 per cent of the Indian population is still illiterate. Provide them with basic primary education so that they are able to fend for themselves. Enhance and innovate. Dissolve the reservation system that eats into people's acumen and misguides them into quiescence, thereby establishing equality in the real sense. So that the average maturity level increases. So that people become aware of how powerful education and cognizance and intellect are.

So that there might come one day in the world, when “getting into IIT” isn’t such a big deal anymore; not because there are enough seats to accommodate everyone(indeed, that is practically inviable), but because everyone has scored 99+. Because then, you won’t need the stamp of IIT, or for that matter, even Stanford or Oxford or any other institution to project YOUR quality; You yourself are the stamp, and the logo.

And the philatelist, is God.

Of men, and mankind....Part III

2008-07-15T23:15:00.000+05:30

AS THE CABBIE SAW IT…

At last.

He was going home.

Today had been a surprisingly busy one. National holidays weren’t all idle, he decided. Towing hundreds of children to their schools and back was worth it though. Those primly-clad, smart little kids in their military attire, caps and miniature flags et al were endearing to see. Our little soldiers! He couldn’t suppress a smile. Marching forth in time to the tune of proud, independent India. Exactly like those brave patriots 50 years ago. What fervour! What stature! That innocent aura! No wonder national spirit, patriotism gave a high unattainable even by tequila. :D

He’d even doen his own bit by carving a crude national flag on the bonnet of his cab. And his little ten-year old had his own military uniform! A smile danced on his lips as he relived the boy whooping in delight at the sight of the costume. He’d been pestering him for years together…and he’d taken part in the rally earlier that day and daddy’s thin chest had swelled with pride.

And now, he was cold, and tired to the bone, and all he could think of was the warmth of his tiny shack and the softness of his son’s fingers as he cuddled into his lap. Wonder what Sangeeta would’ve prepared…

A soft whimper broke his reminiscences. He could see movement ahead. Why would anyone be loitering around at this time of night, he wondered. Must be the local rowdies, drunk probably.

When he neared, he actually got convinced for a moment that he was looking at his own wife and kid.

Come off it! He told himself off. Strange I felt that way.

She was just a harmless little lady. Poor soul. Looked lost. He hesitated. His stomach rumbled. Dunno where the woman would ask him to convey her. He didn’t want to land up miles away from home. And anyways, he’d done many times more than what he was required to that day.

But then no choice again, he thought drily. He couldn’t just leave her to her fate at such an unearthly timing.

He hailed her off.

Now, in the flickering cab-light, he studied her more clearly in the rear-view mirror. She’d looked as hesitant to climb in as he was initially of taking her in. Funnily enough, she’d wanted to give him half-return. And more funnily, he’d had a sudden, inexplicable spurt of inspiration to act King Harishchandra and had refused. His friends would get an excellent reason to boo him off. Shooing off the Goddess of Wealth at his doorstep!

Half-return manaa kar diya?!? Abey gadhe dimaag kahaan chhod aaya??

Talkative as he was, he couldn’t help noticing how silent the lady was. And clutching at her kids all the time. She didn’t even look as if she belonged here. Her dark, young face was heavily lined, perhaps with worry, and an immense sadness, as if she carried a heavy burden on her soul.

All the time, he talked.

And she sat and listened.

Or maybe, simply sat.

She even dozed off for a while, he reckoned. He’d just remembered another interesting anecdote and was starting to narrate it, when he hit a dead end. The Highway had closed down. 12.15 am. He swore. Now he would’ve to take the longer route into town.

The woman looked unperturbed when he furnished this information. Yeah! And why wouldn’t she? They’d already settled the fare, hadn’t they? It’s me who has to burn up money for the toll charges, he cursed himself. His jolly mood had long since evaporated and he was turning surlier by the moment. Why the hell didn’t he take this into account beforehand?? Bada imandar banne chala tha. Ab ho gaya naa ghaate ka sauda!

People who lived hand-to-mouth couldn’t afford to be honest. Then why this sudden streak of soft-heartedness for this woman? For the love of God, I don’t even know her! And anyhow, his mind ploughed on, why are you so afraid of asking her for the extra money? You aren’t asking anything apart from what’s rightfully yours, are you? Cabbies these days pull up for nothing less than full-return! So you’re perfectly justified in asking her half the return fare. And as it is, she’d offered it first. You’ve only got to tell her you want it now.

With a start, he realized they’d already reached their destination. He’d broken into a sweat. Just as he was bracing himself, the unexpected happened.

“Kitnaa hua bhaiyya?”

“Meter ke hisaab se toh pachaas rupaye, madam…lekin…”

“Aap sau le leejiye. Thank you aapne hamein itni door chhoda. Lautne ka problem hogaa. Itni raat gaye graahak nahi milega.”

He thought he hadn’t heard clearly. Did she just offer him a 100 bucks? Double the fare?? Was this a trap? A drive, probably, to catch cabbies extorting passengers red-handed?? Was there a hidden camera in her..purse or somewhere?

He scanned her face closely, looking for signs of betrayal, a slight steeliness, or even a shadow of a triumphant smile.

But the eyes that looked into his were frank. And open. And smiling genuinely. Awash with shining relief. And thankfulness. She was grateful to him that he had reached them home safe and sound.

He could see a long-lost faith in humanity surface in her glistening eyes again.

The emotion which posesses the strength that makes us help others, that pulls us up from materialistic temptation and drives us to sacrifice for others. The ultimate proof that we have evolved, from animals. Else, it would've been termed Animality probably.

But Humanity....was priceless. Invaluable! He had been a creep to misunderstand her so.

“Hum 50 hi lenge madam. Thank you ki koi baat nahi. Aaj humne aapko ghar pahunchaaya. Kal agar aap logon ki jagaah mere biwi-bachche hain, toh unhe bhi meri tarah koi ghar pahunchayega naa. Aakhir insaan hi insaan ke kaam nahi aaya, to jeene ka kya matlab?”

And this time, he truly meant it. He faintly remembered it as a dialogue from some Hindi movie, but the full impact of the statement hit him at that instant.

What’s with the entire wealth of the world at your feet, if you couldn’t help a fellow human-being? One of your own kin? Wouldn't that be a failure of the human race itself?

Of men, and mankind....Part II

2008-07-14T09:55:00.000+05:30

AS THE WOMAN SAW IT...

The pitch dark alleyway loomed in front of her like Satan. Derelict structures bordered the lane; occasional void shrieks and dog howls punctured the pristine silence of the night, sending shivers down her spine. The kid looked ready to rustle up a bigger racket, but the girl was unusually quiet. She felt her mom crumbling, else she’d never lean on her like now. Little as she was, her tummy ached for nourishment, and her body for the soft fluffy bed at home. But she bit her lip, and hung on closer to the trembling arm.

The lady responded almost involuntarily. Unshed tears burned her eyes as the bitterness she held towards the city came crashing down upon her, all over again. The injustice she’d suffered as a newly-wed bride at the hands of the town; the coldness of the society residents when they inducted her into the apartment, the curt, jeering, so-called welcome-to-a-new-home function; the long, lone periods she suffered when her husband went out of town, the piercing back-bitching the fellow moms of her daughters’ friends did, the demeaning way in which the local bhandiwala tried to take advantage of her incompetence in marathi. How the next-door Mrs. Something had turned up with a card and a box of parsnips in the first week of her 8th month into pregnancy.

At least, she bothered to come, bit back her mind.

True, she agreed. No one else did.

Oh! How many times she’d wished she could throw up everything then and there and rush back to....to HOME. To friends, to dad. Even Bombay was better. At least, the people there appreciated the fact that you existed, and existed as a human being not devoid of emotions. They called it the Oxford of the East. Rechristened it as the MHian Capital of Culture and Education. Is this the manner in which "cultured" and “educated” people behaved?? Does development, improvisation, progress, civilization….ah! civilization warrant, or rather, imply THIS??

Ignorance? Or…arrogance??

Were inter-regional marriages such a hard thing to digest for our developing population that they deserved to be shunned so cruelly?

Every time she was demoralized, she built up a stronger self-defence, a refuge from the ruthless world. And every time, the ruthless world came up with more efficiently ruthless ways of strangling her self-dignity. Of crushing her will-power, overthrowing her meekest of hopes.

She had hung up till now, for all her self-worth, for the sake of her loving husband, her family. But could she hang, for life? * pun intended *

Her thoughts abruptly hit shore as her eyes hit the wall beyond. A faint light flickered on as she flung around. She backed away, dragging the girl, even as she took in the situation.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, a voice rang out, crystal clear.

“Itni raat ko yahaan par rukna theek nahi. Kidhar jaana hai madam?”

She smiled, reluctantly. Queer ironies fate has in store. Her mind reeled. Drastically different implications through the same sentence by two different persons.

“10, Station Road. Aap chalenge?”

“Kyon nahi chalenge? Sona rakhaa hai yahaan?!”

“Kitna lenge?”

“Meter jitna dikhaata hai usse ek paisa na jyaada, lekin ek bhi na kam!”

“Half-return nahi?”

“Kanoon ke mutaabik, apun log half-return 12 bajne ke baad lete hain. Abhi paanch minat bache hain. Vaise aapko dena hai madam, to apne ko koi problem nahi hai!” :)

Suspicious though she felt, she climbed in. Off vroomed the cabby, into the pressing dark. The woman, by now, was so painfully alert that, every thud she heard felt over a hundred times magnified, and every bump made her look out for a purposely muffled sound underneath it. The cabbie, though, was at his jolliest best! Blabbing away to glory.

You couldn’t get a more enthusiastic guide to town, she couldn’t help smiling to herself.

His innocent aura emanated exuberance and the tension in the air dissipated away.

“Madam, lambaa rasthaa naapna padegaa. Bole toh aajkal highway 12 baje bandh ho jaata hai.”

“Chaliye.”

She settled in as the driver pulled through the lazy outskirts of the city.

The gentle breeze almost lulled her into a blissful state of semi-consciousness, till....the cabbie, suddenly, ominously, stopped his A.I.R. of blabbing. Her feeling of foreboding bounced back, greater than ever. She looked him all over keenly, but the man seemed oblivious of everything but his driving.

Crazy, eerie thoughts pooled into her mind…of what the man was capable of doing to them, alone as they were. She tried to push the bad thoughts away, but try as she might, they bored deeper and more gorily into her imagination....

Without warning, the vehicle screeched to a halt. The child let out a wail as she was shaken out of her reverie. Fear, cold and piercing, engulfed her veins as she braced herself for any coming onslaught. But, somehow, as she gathered herself, the area seemed very well-lit…and more than a bit familiar..?!?

“Madam, plot 10 aa gaya.”

Of course! The Municipal Hall screening her building! She’d never been so glad to see it! She couldn’t speak for words as relief, warm and glowing, washed her over, inside-out, the second time in two hours. But this time, the reason was genuine. And the relief, curiously satisfying. She looked up into the beaming face of the cabbie. He was looking a bit the worse for wear, and his generous smile was vanishing fast as he tried to mumble something.

The woman took no notice.

She was lost in her own thoughts.

“Kitnaa hua bhaiyya?”

“Meter ke hisaab se toh pachaas rupaye, madam…lekin…”

The lady cut across.

“Aap sau le leejiye. Thank you aapne hamein itni door chhoda. Lautne ka problem hogaa. Itni raat gaye graahak nahi milega.”

Silence, overawed.

But, this time, the driver managed to mumble, audibly. “ ”

Then he took the 100 rupee note and duly returned the change.

And thudded away into the blackhole before she could protest, like some angel of God, it struck her, silently morphing away into oblivion after liberating distressed mortal souls.

The girl clapped her hands enthusiastically. She was really, really hungry, but it didn’t matter for once. She snuggled closer to the warmth, and light.

The trio looked after the careering vehicle, till its silhouette blended into the black, then slowly turned around to home, each in his own world....

Of men, and mankind....Part I

2008-05-29T10:03:00.000+05:30

AS THE WORLD SAW IT...

“Amma! Look!”

The little girl came bobbing down the lit podium, two fat trophies clenched in her bantam hands. The top of her tiny head barely visible above the two patches of glistening silver, she came bustling straight into the woman’s arms, dizzy as she was with excitement. The woman felt proud of the little girl, of her miniature bundle of talent, of her own ability of bringing up the child as genuine a fairytale as can be; in the face of profound hurdles. The applause, sweet, jingled in her ears, as she scooped up all three as un-clumsily as she could, already overladen as her arms were, with baby and bags.

And at that fateful moment of reunion, poof! went the lights.

The entire school was plunged into darkness. Peons and staff rushed about the suddenly-sinister premises in apparent confusion. The Annual School Gathering of M.I.T. had almost reached a well-sketched-out conclusion, with the prize-distribution ceremony being the last but one. The HeadMaster, having forsaken his congratulatory end-of-function speech, had zipped away in his Jag minutes ago. No one considered it worth spending a few thousand units of completely-funded power to start up the sole generator of the institution to see its menagerie safely outside. However, with no clue how, the entire campus emptied in ten minutes flat. With the lady and her crew left stranded at the gate. The girl clung to her, her smile of triumph astray, as the baby fought for escape. Hesitantly, the woman approached the watchman fumbling with the lock.

“ Excuse me…suniye bhaiyya…”

“ Memsahib, jaldi ghar jaiye. Itni raat ko yahaan par akele rukna theek nahi.”

And the next second saw him furiously pedaling away on his bicycle.

So much for the advice, she sighed.

Once again, she was left completely alone at an unearthly timing in an alien city at one of the only two places she was familiar with [the other, being home]; with no car. Her husband was away on tour. As he was, most of the times. She didn’t know the local language. And she had two kids, and baggage in tow. But she couldn’t linger there for eternity. She shouldn’t.

She got out of the lane and into the main road. The few souls in sight passed her by as if she were an invisible soul walking the earth.

At least, I know the place I am in.

And, as if hope begets hope, a cabby stole across the baleful road towards her. Relief, warm and fiery, crept over her skin, erupting into goose bumps.

“10, Station Road.”

“Baithiye, memsahib.”

The lady thanked all her lucky stars as she cajoled her kids in. What would she have done, but for the godsent chariot?!

Five minutes into the journey, the hope that was apparently begotten revealed its true self.

The cabbie led his beauty into a desolate bylane.

“Memsahib, full return mangata hai.”

“Kya? Lekin….aapne pehle kahaan bataaya...”

“Ab bataa rahaa hoon na, madam. Kyon baat ko bevajah bigaadne par tuli hui hain! Aapke liye kaunsi badi baat hai!”

Expectant, secretive smile.

“Main half-return doongi….aap hi ke association dwaara banaye gaye rules ke mutaabik. Aap…aap zabardasti nahi kar sakte..."

The next minute witnessed the cabbie pulling up his vehicle to a screech, pulling the helpless woman and her kids out mercilessly, and driving away; with malice in his eyes, and ice in his voice.

“Paregaon se aake akadh dikhaati hai, saali!”

Classic! She’d forgotten. Misery begets itself more than hope does. Much, much more. Fate seemed to take heavenly delight in tossing her around. Picking up her own words and transforming them into double-edged tools. Now she didn’t even have a name for the ground she ventured an uncertain step forth.

The girl clung on tighter, and she felt like clinging back....

la folie

2008-05-17T08:50:00.000+05:30

I just found out that the Anunnaki are any of a group of powerful Babylonian earth spirits or genii; more generally, servitors of the gods.

And queerly, very queerly, the next site I randomly hit upon is The Cyborg Name Decoder!

Which one's more incongruous, do you think? :P

Get Your Cyborg Name

And yeah! This verse actually takes the cake.

for they fade away ! then you won't be able to run and play!

knock knock! who's there? Anu ! Anu who? Anu come out and play?

Jesus! [c]racks me up everytime! :D

Ahem! Can Mr. Psychiatrist please take note ? :|

Of graphics, and graphicians....

2008-04-06T09:41:00.000+05:30

My heartfelt three-finger salute to one of the most intriguing professors of today.

Student-friendly to the core. One of the rare few "lecturers" who could have done justice to the part of student-representative to specialised perfection. One of the rare few with whom U could discuss Taare Zameen Par and Chak De... as vividly as machine drawing. One of the rare few who could torment us with 112 spine-bending assignment problems, but still manage to create a reluctant place in my mind. Or, at least, in my blog. :D

Mind-bogglingly insightful. As equally immersed in student welfare as in isometric projections. Equally intense opinions about all the other spicy tidbity pandemonium let loose under the sun. Very expressive. Itching for reform. And what makes him stand out among other such barking-but-never-biting kinda dogs is that given an opportunity, he WILL do it.

I perpetually lie awaiting the end of his lectures [regular, and supplementary], not coz I'm childhood enemies with the subject[Indeed, I've always considered Engg. drawing as one of the few subjects which challenges human imagination like nothing else can!], but coz the last half an hour is seven times worth the ordeal! He inevitably lands up devoting the last 30 minutes to the current social focus. Delightfully interesting viewpoints! I always get the gut feeling that he feels very strongly about any injustice done. Be it anyone. There's this innocent feeling of wanting to pour out everything he has in mind, and wish...just wish earnestly that the person in front sees the wonderful sense in it. He just can't help it. The dam can't stand the river anymore! And then he apologises over n over again for trying to provoke us into rebellion!! :>

Quite just when it comes to assessment. Way ahead of his contemporaries! Very comforting aura. Can turn as competitive as surly. Has yellowed newspaper cuttings about extinct issues since 1947. Has trademark statements[like most of the profs. have]. Has a million behavioral characteristics which I despise[his funny English and melodramatic way of going about things being at the fore!]; but nonetheless as ideal as a professor can practically be. Turned a bit senti today. Was our last official graphics lecture. Now DID YOU REALIZE THE COMIC ABSURDITY OF THE STATEMENT ?!!? Have u ever heard of an engg. professor turning emotional after having interacted three months with a batch of six dozen students, half of whose names he's never heard of?? :O Told us: "I wouldn't feel any happier if I got a big fat trophy for academics than I would if I am projected as a good teacher by my students."

Told U. INTRIGUING.

Amen. That was quite a menial attempt, at paying a sort-of tribute to our Engg. graphics professor. :)

The man roxxx !!!! :D

After all, u won't meet a prof every ten steps who would implore u NOT to cross the potentially dangerous traffic-ridden Bombay-Poona Highway in front of our college JUST to submit the graphics assignments. :)

Random Thoughts, Episode 1

2008-03-27T08:51:00.000+05:30

Okaaaay. So this is a random tag I picked up from The Randomiser. :)

And I picked it up for the complicated[U don't say!] reason that I've had sooo many fuller, more abstruse topics to write on this month, but I've just been too lazy to write. So I wanted to do justice to the blessed month of March. Atleast once. And in such a way that it would do justice to meself too.

Maybe I prefer thinking to writing. I say that because it goes something like this. Most of the times. Whenever I have a long, fruitful [ that's VERY important.] brainstorming session with myself, I promise myself I'll blog about it; and then, I move on to THINK about the writing part. In quite a reflexive sort of way. I think about how I have to take the pains of switching on my desktop, opening Word, or Notepad; writing, saving the document at intervals or risk losing everything to an unpredictable power cut, then doing the bloody spell-check [which gives weird substitutes for words like "li'l"...I get ill's, ill, lilt, lily, and lid's. I mean, even the just-born li'l pink one in mama's lap in the nasty disinfectant-smelling cubicle would deduce that "li'l" means "little". Not quite, but I just couldn't resist the funny statement. :D "Li'l" sounds just soo much more little!! Talk about phonetic symbolism. :D :D ], changing fonts, text colours, alignments, connecting to the LAN at the abysmal velocity my broadband has, and though my brainy neurons spew out things which are quite a thousand times worth all the tediousness, I still ultimately end up reckoning I'd rather just sleep over it.

That's what happened with Regatta; and what I now have is just a brilliant post on it. IN MY MIND. "The Spiritual Rendition Of Regatta'08 -by Miss Anuradha Ganesh." That was one of the three spiffing titles lined up.[I don't remember the other two.] That's exactly what happened with the dissection of my post before this post. Although practically speaking, that can be done later too. Granted that I don't keep on putting it off till eternity, of course.

Come to think about it, I have written some of my best posts in my mind; they could never make it to the material world with the same intensity. For by the time I have roused my tousled-up anatomy to do the many things prior to attacking the keyboard, the storm has stopped raging and become more inertial than sticky cream. The few vagaries I’ve haphazarded on these pages are mere GT imitations of what they were.

And can you believe it! I've yet again managed to drift away from the topic as smooth as silk! Random sure enough the thoughts are, random enough the write-up is, but random I had planned on putting it up in The Original Randomiser’s way[Bully for you, jd! ;) ], and random it ends up in MY ishtyle! wH0A!! Strange things lethargy can do to human beings. Maybe, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

But the tagged, I will be. For the sake of my blog, at least. :P

Random Thoughts - Episode 1

1> If YOU are a damn good writer, and MOST of your friends aren't, then U end up writing over-hyped testimonials for them [outta pure habit, more than anything else… just coz…well..U simply can’t seem to go beneath a certain level of writing u see :D]; and in return U get very humble ones, the whole procedure effectively making THEM sound more cooler[screw the double comparative! It still ain’t pun enough! ] than you, when in fact, it is quite the opposite. Believe me! You are in the drag here. :P

No offence meant, people! U know I just can't resist the sarcasm! :D

2> All significant application forms should have only two columns regarding NAME. First name.

And last name. Why do all the offices and institutions in MH rebel against me when I tell them I DON’T have a surname ?? Is it such a horrendous crime not to have one ?? Does Clause 172 of The IPC Bare Act, 1860 state that NOT having a last name pertaining to your hometown means you don’t have a hometown ?? Does that mean I originated out of emptiness ?!?! DARK MATTER ??????? WOW!!! I’m a cosmological miracle! :|

3> Why are people’s cell phones set to the silent mode and left lying around when U need to call them in life-threatening situations ?? I tell you, I’m gonna look up the IDEA helpbook one of these days and see if they have a suing facility for habitual overuse of emergency amenities.

4> Typing out in short-note form is soo much more hassle-free. You don’t need to figure out where the paragraphs are s’posed to start everytime.

5> Rediscovering things for yourself makes you feel so much more matterable. Substantive. Humble. Proud.

I mean..I could give you an example..which might sound quite childish..but it mattered the world to me. Atleast when I discovered it.

One of the most basic axioms of the most logical subject there can be: Mathematics. “Three non-collinear points determine a plane.” I always used to wonder [in 5th std.] what the heck it meant. I dunno if anyone else ever did, or I was the only one naive enough; but none of my friends ever mentioned it then, maybe coz they were just as mortified of being made a laughing stock of as a low-understanding-capacity-wala-blunderer as I was, and the professor was just as interested as a baboon would be in explaining it. Maybe he didn’t know it himself. Hardly matters. No one was game for him.

Drifting back, the point I used to mull upon was “Why the damn, THREE points? ONE point determines a plane too. Two too. ‘n’ number of points determine a plane as well as three. THEN WHY THREE MAN ???? And why NON-collinear??” And I sat and figured my head off for aeons. Everywhere. All the time. In the kitchen till the food graduated to an inevitable state of inedibility and I stomped off cursing the household for not providing me one of the basic needs of living in its most hygienic form. In the bathroom till all the water siphoned off, stimulating mom to shout her head off maniacally at the door, wanting to know if I had hung myself by the shower out of depression. I thought and thought till all I could see was a myriad of multi-coloured planes, revolving in front of my eyes…jeering away at me.. and the nerves in my cerebrum morphed into hordes of sticky points joining each other by crooked lines, resembling the jagged teeth of an Ice-Age giant; threatening to overwhelm my sanity if I didn’t agree straightaway with the three-point-plane. You’d think I was Archimedes caught in the climax of his career, just about to discover the Law of Buoyancy!

And then, one evening, in a similar state of haziness, unexpectedly, the full impact of the golden statement came crashing down upon me!! One point “convokes” a plane. Constitutes a plane. True. Two do too. But then, they might convoke MANY. But three “determine” a plane. A unique one. An entity. Four do too. True. And ‘n’ without doubt. But then again, they MIGHT NOT. THREE is the boss sure enough! The fine line between the only three probable cases. And then, came crashing down another indispensable truth. Language. The most powerful weapon mankind can possibly wield if he cares to. The difference one almighty word can make. Of life and death. Or, more euphemically put, a girl’s sanity mattered in this case. :D And believe me! With the bombardment of two apparently unrelated absurdly-obvious-once-u-realized-it-sort-of facts, on a temporarily-misaligned human system, I felt as euphoric as Archimedes did !!! I even shouted out “Eureka!” !!! Ahem! Unfortunately [or fortunately!], I wasn’t insane enough to do the physical act he did on impulse. I caught myself. Bless his bath sponge. :P

Point is: Rediscovery is just as heavenly as Discovery. After all, what matters is YOU. Life beckons you alone. You discovering it is as good as Archimedes discovering it. Hardly matters that he discovered it before U. In fact, if I had the authority, I would've penalised him on moral grounds for having deprived the rest of the earthlings the singular satisfaction of finding it out on their own. When U find it out for urself, U are subjected to all those lines of thought that he was subjected to; U understand the process of discovery. The complexity, YET the simplicity of the beauty, which is what matters. Which is what matters because, if U accept something just because it has been propagated by eminent thinkers, and has been verified by time-tested methods, its existence in your mind is radioactive; but if U know the reason behind the find, if U have experienced the minute dissection each and every aspect of the concept requires, if U have absorbed the topic illinoically; U will remember it for life. Coz it's YOURS now. It gets ingrained into you. It's just as simple as someone telling you that you'll never forget your alphabet! U gave it ur heart and soul; it gave U enlightenment. I know, I understand he circulated the idea for the timely well-being of mankind, revolutionising the world of physics alright; but still....... People don't realize the magnanimity of the find coz they are delighted enough to let others do the work. Coz they are so busy trying to avoid the trouble that they miss the sun. Coz they are lazy. Just as I am.

If YOU understand the secrets of life on your own, and revel in them, the world is ur game. If u don’t, nothing is.

6> I suck at short-note-writing!! Doesn’t point 5 seem as if it could’ve made an entire effing blogpost ?!!? Darn!

7> Darn again! Why can't I be more discrete ?! :|

8> I listened to Celine Dion crooning “ I am Alive” 7 times consecutively as I thought out on the the 7 odd points I typed above. Without realizing I did. Background music sort of. Was it pure co-incidence? Or was it that I could relate to something in the music, something so obscure that I hadn’t accounted for it before ??

9> Am I going perpetually crazy ?? I never was a Dion fan !!!!

10> I use too many exclamation marks. :|

11> And too many straight faces. (:|)

12> Well, now that I HAVE started, I can’t, and don’t wanna stop writing. And I realize it's just the getting-started-part which is tricky. Then the rhythm sustains itself. You can start with a single word and land up building an entire concept. Like the carbon-cycle. Against the laws of nature to pull out; but pull out I have to.

Cheers.

And P.S. If you think I write long whiny posts, I’d say you are blessed U haven’t seen half of it. I used to be the longest essay-writer in school. :D :D

Uhmmm...

2008-03-01T11:50:00.000+05:30

Well, this time round, I'm just gonna give my messed-up mind a holiday, and my puffed-up fingers some exercise!

What with mid-sems over[Comments on this particular part of the post shall be considered nothing short of moral intrusion :P], and what with the sports fest and Regatta coming up[in which I play a very negligible role], I've landed up doing so many wild sort of things [of which bathing at half-past in the night(that was unplanned) and pilfering food 13 times in a day(that was planned! :P) are the menial ones, to say the least!] that nothing's gonna be very suspiciously startling for me, at least for some days to come.

So, right, yesterday, scouting around for something to do, I happened, by pure absent-mindedness, to open my overflowing spare cupboard! By mutual consent, none of my folk dares to open it...on apprehension of an imminent threat of an avalanche of junk..which is precisely what happened! I won't go into further details of what I was subjected to[let your imagination run askew :D]; the only interesting thing that happened was I discovered one of my ol'write-ups. One corresponding to my 10th life. 3 months for the board exams to go, and me scribbling away frantically, as if THAT somehow would make the difference I desperately hoped to be made. Going through it made me relive all those times as vividly as if they had happened right yesterday! Made me pine for those irreplaceable schooldays...made me see them in a whole new light...plus, I unconsciously got round to introspecting my writing too!

But all that for the next post. Right now, mind goes into dream mode, as I type away one of my monologues with God during one of the most intriguing phases of my life....a bit childish...a bit immature...a bit insecure...a bit dramatic...somewhat inquisitive...somewhat archaic...oh what the heck! The only disclaimer I would like to make before commencing is that the random incidents convoked below have been long since come-to-terms-with and it doesn't in the least matter if this post gets published even in the TOI[I wish! ;) ] coz the ones to whom it'll really matter already know. So I ain't even gonna bother editing it. It's ME laid bare.

09/12/2004

12:10 am

"Well, looking through, I guess I've written my last[or is it the first ?] supposed-to-be-diary entry more than 1 month ago. And u bet! The two days couldn't have been any more drastically different! My mood might be worse, but mom's definitely in one of her philosophical-cry-blame-sarcastic-depressed myriad of moods. It started off with me refusing to share half of my pizza[Anti-Pasto] with Vinod, my silly small bro [I mean, you people dined royally at Pancard's, mom, and bought me parcels AND still, U expect me to sacrifice away half of my food to that gluttonous imp!!! :( ]; the usual fight, which turned into nasty battleground fight[with bits of spaghetti flying round the gallery!]; and finally into EAT-or-DIE fight; I won the food but lost my mom! [The li'l devil won her all over again, as he always does!]

Anyways, one of the greatest differences between last entry-day & today is -

ONE SEMESTER OF MY 10TH CAREER IS OVER!!

And can u believe it GOD! The one with which I hoped to re-start my legendary string of standing-first-in-class times, turned out to be one of the worst! I came out 14th in the prelims, in a class of 60, going down badly in the subject I revere above all. MATH. And u know god, the worst thing of all, and i KNOW it, it is entirely, entirely 1001% my own fault [although I'll never admit it to mom, or dad, or for that matter, to anyone, EXCEPT YOU]. I am the world's biggest duffer, saddest person for letting this happen to me; happen to me when I WAS in charge, in full control of the bull, and I let it bound away while still telling myself I can control it! How pathetically stupid, how blindingly foolish can I turn! I hate myself for this! :(

But god, I am not gonna lose that wonderful touch. Optimism. NEVER! I've lost count of the number of times I've leaned on U for support! Instead, this time again, I'm gonna shamelessly ask you to pull me out of this mess, somehow, leaving me ultimately "spotless"; bringing the entire episode of my miserable preliminaries to such a cathartic conclusion that it leaves a ZERO[not even 'negligible'] bad impression on my score-card and certificates. Plus, somehow, try to achieve this formidable task without letting mom n dad know that I've gone through such procedures. Please. PLEASE, both for my sake, and for theirs. It will break their hearts. But that brings me to an altogether another chapter-My Behaviour towards them. Inexcusable. There's no other word. I know I've been the worst daughter to them the last one month. In the excitement of getting together with some of my dearest friends, I took my parents utterly for granted! They would've gotten accustomed to "getting their hearts broken" I s'pose. I promise god, I'll try my best to make it up to them, be a daughter that they can be proud of! [And maybe, I'll try to take a bit more care of my bro too. MAYBE! :D]

Coming back to academics, one more favour GOD. Apart from my parents, there are 2 other people in my life, and it is tremendously important that they remain ignorant of my miserable predicament! You know who they are [No names here, too risky!]; and one of them has enormous probability of coming to know about it as he's my pracs-partner[not to mention my on-campus partner-in-crime! cheers for the title dude! ;) ], and a damn intuitive guy[rare, those! ], so I don't exactly need to elaborate, do I ?? Please, let my friends support me at this crucial juncture. These 2 people mean soo much to me... I hope the daunting stand of this turning-point phase doesn't end up overwhelming our good-hearted throw plays, thereby engineering a forever-gaping hole in our blossoming friendship. And please, make sure the final boards DON'T GET postponed! The extra intermediate 15 days would be unbearable torture!!

Please. please. pleeease. U seem to have become an alternate anu's wish list haven't you ?!![knock on wood!] But what else CAN I DO ??? I have got so much to say, but my thoughts are lightning! Before I can even begin to compose them, a new string bounces forward. But you are faster than lightning-Grasp them from my mind and PLEASE help me!!!

[Maybe I'll put in that rant i scribbled to you in desperation here!]

In short, I badly need YOU! Be with me! I can do without anyone else, but not without you God! Let the New Year bring joy with it; joy for me, a signal of my uphill trudge! YESSSS! And i assure you, I myself will be 99% instrumental in bringing it about.

Alright, handwriting gradually turning into noodles, so I s'pose I should stop writing...Dunno when I shall be writing again.....hoping the next musing would be during a more cheerful phase of life.

Yours shamelessly,

But Yours nevertheless (GOD) always,

Anu."

Dissection later.

DeBuggeD !

2008-02-10T09:15:00.000+05:30

I LOVE PHYSICS!! :)

Why is it that just after completing an examination, I develop a sudden exaggerated interest towards the corresponding topics?? Is it because of the gone-aboard realization that I could've done loads better HAD I shown that interest some hours before?? How hurting is the "sinking in" of the situation that folk tons less brainy than YOU performed tons better than you just coz they slogged irrelevantly through the whole night afore when u spent it straining the sofa, reading Harry Potter-7 for the 77th time?? When U KNOW u could've done it in less than one-third the same time?!! When we feel cheated and inflicted-upon unfairly by others, outrage and vocal hostility are the easiest reprieves; and they come naturally. But what if the cheater and the cheated are one and the same?? Is the completely empathetic, alien emotion coursing through me right now ignominy? Shame? Or self-pity? A chauvinistic desire to explain away what is inexcusable?? But to whom?? I can rave at mom. I can TRY TO rave at dad. And without doubt, unrestrainedly at my closest friends. But MYSELF ?!!?

For folk who couldn't figure out that muddle: WELL and GOOD. You are lucky u haven't gone through that kinda dilemma in life.

For folk who did: I ain't a hypocrite.

Einstein WASN'T one too.

Amen.

Run-time Error

2008-02-09T12:25:00.000+05:30

For the past one-and-a-crescent hour, I've been idling around the comp, waiting and waiting aaaand waiting for blogworld-shattering thoughts to present themselves to my overtly over-saturated mind, with an occasional I-am-s'posed-to-be-studying-!-what-the-hell-am-I-doing-drooling-over-the-comp floating across it. None turn up. What instead turns up is: Tomorrow comes with a beautiful physics test. 10 marks. Whipping up nuclear delights topped up with semiconducting sauce. Next week comes with a still more stunning midterm exam. And the only purpose these thoughts serve are to fill me with a still more unshakeable determination to drool still more over the comp. My mind jumps from orkut to facebook to google to Aarewah to roof-turbine no-power ventilators to H2GO to "The Butterfly Effect" faster than the pace of mind*lightning combined![for want of a FASTER pace! :D] There's absolutely no logical reason why outta the blue my mind boomeranged from orkut to Ashton Kutcher, and there shouldn't be too, considering tis MY mind.

There's a cold draught coming up. Very queer of the Poona winter to come up in mid-February, and come up so cold! Really queer. Pretty Miss Winter's turning out as sadly unpredictable as me.

Still nothing. I check my mail. Google a bit. Learn that the Aussies thrashed Sri Lanka in the World Cup rerun. So much for Ponting; so little for me. I walk up to the window. Watch a fresh couple walking up to the nearest gate and walk back again. Walk back again. The Backstreet Boys rock and rap away in my ears. Crude disturbance in the transmission. Cruder of me when I realize its mom shouting her lungs away at me to stuff my blog and transfer my electrons from ground to the excited. Mom's B.Sc in physics. I sigh. Continue.

As in continue to unsuccessfully try filling up this kind-of prussian blue polka-dotted space. Check my mail again. Google a bit more. Stand up purposefully. Firmly deciding I wanna do something other than the stupid nincompoopity I am doing right now. Don't even realize for a full minute WHEN I sat back down wondering about for WHAT was the irresistible fetish for purposefulness that set me standing in the first place.

Mom shouts her larynx away.

STILL nothing! Man alive! Why is it that when u sit down to do something, all panned out to the minute, it never comes out the way u wanted it to; and the same thing turns out a zillion times better than expected[rather, unexpectedly, coz u didn't expect it to happen in the first place] when it just happens in tandem?!?! Why is my typing speed so slow? Darn! An inexplicable loss of the ability to express myself when I am desperate enough to kick away (even) THAT ability is one of the worst emotions I have experienced.

Am I turning slave to hyperboles??

As if on cue, Howie deserts me too.

I guess I should give up, as of now.

Before mom shouts her trachea and alveoli and thoracic diaphragm away.

Party of The Stars, Part 2

2008-01-27T01:36:00.000+05:30

Well...yeah...so where was I last time? The self-promise of taking out time to blog almost every day has unwittingly fizzled out into nothingness! Time seems to have taken affinity to the F1, and drains out as quick as the washing machine PVC pipe these days![I got the idea of the weird comparison coz I'm sitting near the blessed machine right now, hearing it rumbling away serenely, at its own pace, with not a care about the world! Fortune doesn’t just favour the brave; it favours the non-living too! NOT FAIR man!]

So..yeah..coming back to...yes! THE star party! First of all, for those who came in late, a star party is a sort of astronomical gathering; where amateur astronomers[in this case, the COEP Astro Club] gather officially[at NIGHT, obviously!]to observe the path and position of heavenly bodies in the lovely star-spangled sky. Typically a dark sky site away from 'light pollution' is chosen as a location. Telescopes and binocs are the basic essentials, among others. So armed with li'l more than this sundry information, I had set out on this celestial [for want of a better word] venture.

Well. Kamshet. Quite a lazy town I would say. We chugged in at around 5'o'clock, only to find the folk shutting down shop for the day! With a bit of difficulty, and loads of dhakka-bukki, we managed to stick ourselves into 2jeeps...& 32 "healthy" people in two jeeps is hardly a joke, I tell you!! I was cramped beside the driver, making it potentially dangerous for the 17 lives[including the driver!] in the vehicle, as I was scandalisingly close to the handgear! Anyhow, the predicament was soon forgotten in the light of...aahhh.. THE VIEW! :D

Milton's inspiration, nothing less! Mine is just a naive attempt to capture the panorama...but let's try.

The rough-hewn path bumped us away. The brimming Panshet dam, the gentle caressing, comforting, cool breeze arising over it, as if taking us in its warm, effervescent embrace; protecting us, telling us 'I AM there'. The rose fields were a sight to behold...bunches of hybrid teas and grandifloras swayed round at intervals, as if waiting to serenade the Gods themselves! The budding corn twinkled innocently in the waning sunlight... And the sun itself! Setting in all its eternal glory! As if the hilltops yonder are basking in the wake of a lustrous crown... A lovely golden ball in the sky; full in the eyes; gently, gradually, but FIRMLY melting away into the horizon; pure in essence, transforming even the ugliest children of God into plain beauty; the greenery assimilating it drop by drop, till I never knew which is hill and which is sun...the goldenness overwhelmed me, shined through me, IT BECAME A PART OF ME. And it is during such times that I dearly wish I had a camera-phone on me...Ohh how I wish I could capture 'life' on print as in words! The greenhouses, the cute li'l homely cottages, the shady foliage, cattle; all the village needed was a bit of snowfall to look a perfect Christmas card in the top view! [too much of graphics! :D]

Anyhow, after an eventful ride of 40 minutes, we reached kshitija's farmhouse. Freshened up. Fell upon the food like TWO starving boar-hounds EACH of us!! My consequent oncoming sleep fled after being chased round the field by a cute (= mortifying) puppy named 'Vaghya'[I am mortally afraid of dogs of all shapes and sizes.] Got decked up in mufflers and jerkins till we couldn't recognize each other! And set out; a tight group of campers, aiming to conquer the heavens!

The fields provided a perfect site for mounting the telescopes. It started off with the seniors giving us the basic info about the sky, its layout, conventional ways of identifying the positions of stars, constellations, satellites, and flashes w.r.t others. I tried to memorise everything simultaneously; ME, with one of the sharpest memories humans can have, but it just went on and on and on! I gave up! Confusions abound. The seniors were practiced experts; but beginners like me were lost.

Anyhow, once we started the actual observation and got the hang, it was sort of easy. We collimated the moon, Mars, Orion [The Hunter], and a hoard of M-objects[short for Messier objects; lovely star clusters, fuzzy patches more like to the naked eye]. We saw almost 21 meteors! And, [I’m a li’l unsure] maybe just one Iridium flare blazed across the velvety sky! We traced all the 12 zodiac constellations. Plus Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Pegasus, Perseus, Sirius, Regulus, Aldebaran, Canis Major[The Great Dog], Canis Minor[The Lesser Dog], Ursa Major[The Great Bear], Ursa Minor[The Li’l Bear], Mensa, Lyra, Pavo, Hydra, Leo, Aries, Draco…Gawd!! Simply amazing the brilliant imagination of the human mind! Stars and shapes! I managed to capture the moon[just as it was setting] and Saturn at my first go! I was thrilled to the core, flushed and dizzy with excitement! Goosebumps erupted on my skin! [Although that maybe coz of the less-than-6deg temperature too! hehe]Stars and ONLY stars danced in front of my eyes! I definitely needed a break! As a matter of fact, every one did!

The cold seeped in as I went down. And it was THEN, while simply lying there, shivering in a flimsy jacket, gazing up at the heavens, cracking silly jokes, gorging on chocolate to keep awake, among some of the most wonderful and knowledgeable people I’ve known in my life; THEN, suddenly, outta the blue, it struck....the submissive vastness, the perpetual infinitum of the universe. Could anything ever try to emulate it? The all-pervading. Omniscient. You could sense its expanse! It absorbs EVERYTHING; takes ALL of us in its stride; the enormity of the responsibility the universe undertakes uncomplainingly overwhelmed me! I felt like a small dot in this gigantic stretch, moaning about my silly day-to-day troubles; all my bitterness towards so many others melted away in that single instant! I felt at peace with the world. With mankind.

The Milky Way stretched across; white on inky-black, like some mischievous li’l angel’s spilt his milk across the heavenly floors![Hope his mom spares him! :D] God is so romantic ain’t he! To have designed the lovely sky! Just the perfect scattering. Uncertainty sure has its own charm! I always used to wonder why folk always say “I wanna go to heaven!”…I mean… Don’t you love to live?!!? That used to be my point of argument. But lying there, I realized that, THAT, if anything, WAS a place I would love to die for!

Well, with much persuasion, it was around 4am when we finally got our asses off the ground. Scorpio was out as Orion had sunk. Scorpius is the only known constellation which has a clearly traceable shape in the sky befitting its name. You can look at it and instantly say THIS is Scorpio! Clearly defined forelegs and the magnificent sting. The mythological creature that was the downfall of the hunting great, Orion. That is signified by the rising of Scorpio during the setting of Orion! Cool na!

The whole night’s work had taken its toll on the telescopes. Dew settled snugly on the lenses, making any further clear viewing highly impacting on the eyes. Trupti called pack-up. My mind was still full of the night as we put away the instruments. The exhaustive but indispensable knowledge of the others simply bowled me over! Made me feel still more of a novice than I really am! But one always begins at the beginning innit?! I hadn’t slept an inkling!! I guess that says it all!

Garam chai and steaming hot kanda pohe[our hosts were Godsent!] back at the farmhouse revived us enough for the bumpy ride back to the station. Cameras clicked, good-byes said. And in true filmy ishtyle, three of us rounded the party off by hanging off the rear of the jeep through the whole of the 18km back to the railway station!! It felt awesome to feel the icy-cold air whipping through my hair [that AGAIN rhymes! i DO have something in common with Milton, after all.]; feel the astounded stares of the sleepy villagers sweeping me over as I hung on to the roof of the jeep; weaving through the early-morning stragglers...and then you know!

BACK TO THE GRIND.

Party of The Stars, Part 1

2008-01-23T11:35:00.000+05:30

Back to the grind.

Back to the hectic schedule typical of an engineering student. After a very refreshing & much-needed hiatus of 1 golden month, back to the daily gruelling 8-8[not kidding]. Literally it tosses me into one of those nice gruelly gruels peasants just worship! College, classes, BC, still more classes,and still some more! Collateral. Come to think of it though, last week was a very different one. For a very pragmatic reason. Same time, 7-and-1 days ago; couldn't have been a more different situation; couldn't have been a more different place;.... couldn't have been A MORE DIFFERENT ME. Reeling back.......

Kamshet. A sleepy swaying village on the outer outskirts of Pune. The impatient wait for the end of the last lecture at college. The unplanned last-minute rushing off to Venus for buying[in cash!] the ever-elusive Commander. The consequent reduction of my normally-balanced lunch to scrounging on a greasy vada-paav. The comic fate of priya's toothbrush[I'll save you guys the danger of dying in splits by not mentioning it here!]. The incessant phone-calls from my mom & dad, who had assumed I'm going on nothing short of an Alexandrian war![I won't ever get why the idea of night outs won't appeal to moms and dads! In fact, I could do a Rowling on all the whimsical fancies moms & dads have concerning their sons & daughters! Hang on....maybe I WILL! watch out!] The scramble of 32 people at the SAME compartment of the local, in tow with 3 6"telescopes. The eleventh-hour changing of compartments[I'm still trying to find out a valid reason].

The tentative 1 1/4 hr. journey with me staring away shamelessly at one of my lesser-acquainted colleagues and him staring at me when HE THINKS I'm not staring at him[when I really AM outta the corner of my eye!]; wondering when(if ever!)the words of wisdom(or at least, words of 'recognisable' frequency)are going to pour out of his mouth, when he might have been wondering the same thing about ME! The final realization that switching on my Apple iPod would be a much more fruitful way of spending the remainder of the journey. The tragedy of the poor pencil-salesman on the local offering 4 lead-pencils for a meagre 10bucks! But Amen! We were finally aboard! And chugging on to my first ever star party! YAYY!

Man! Was I excited! There are a lot many amazing things I have done for the first time since stepping into COEP.... and I hope and pray that a lot more will come my way![wow! that rhymes! :D]

For Starters...

2008-01-21T09:46:00.000+05:30

Okay so here I go at last! My baby blog! I've alternately convinced and put myself off since the last season[3rd of Dec'07 to be precise] the stress of creating a blog, and more so the nagging necessity of maintaining it, but ultimately the victorious won! :D And here I am.

Basically, there are several reasons why I graced Blogger,the primary ones being a dawning tiresomeness towards putting pen to paper[I've had enough of THAT in the boardrooms!], bringing my typing speed up to scratch, making productive 'net' use of download periods[which otherwise shall be deemed 'net'ally illegal in this beautiful era of multitasking], plus,if I ever,EVER, find the time to read my own blog, a chance to refresh my abysmal memory[Modesty is a quality!], and more trivial things among others.

However, the most genuine reason i succumbed to the idea is the most intriguing of all.

A stitch in my side. Two. Stray threads hanging. However much I try to channel the formidable rush my thoughts are, they trickle away twice as fast. Not that they are of much use to anyone, just the vague randomness of a vaguer girl. Now there, now gone! One after the other, just swirl away, with me standing helplessly around, trying to gain control over my (very) OWN Goddamn mind! The need, the desperate urge, to express myself, not just, but in the best inconspicuous manner that is. I'm positive that will harbour diverse opinions-"blogs are public!", "you talk of privacy when its possible for the whole world to view it!"...but Possible,guys, is not a word I care to meddle with. The queerest thing about this queer,queer world is we[ME included!] love spying on ANY[be it Beckham, or the sweet nex'door] creature on the face of Earth, but offer it on a platter, and see the smiles drop off 'our' faces faster than mercury off a table! Kiss a guy behind a tree, and turn around to a sea of expectant-cum-prying eyes; kiss a guy in public, and turn around.......to a sea of pointed-cum-outraged eyes. Going public is the best way of keeping what you really wish to be private exactly that. PRIVATE. The very fact that it is open to all makes it fantastic to-be-least-bothered-about material. It is THERE. It ain't banned. So we can get hold of it anytime. And SO we don't get hold of it ANY TIME. Call it your 'personal diary', and you'll have people[esp. closer ones like parents, siblings, best friends] itching to have a go at it; tag it a blog, and they won't even know it exists! In conclusion, a blog's the best personal diary I could have presented myself. [Oops! Did I say Personal Diary?!?!] :D

Happy Reading [Hopefully!]

And oh[before it trickles away too!], I'd be most interested in any suggestions guys. Be generous!