nostalgia@desktop...

Eye@5042kms
Eye@9.76kms

Eye@1.46 kms

Eye@377 m

Eye@101 m

And Nostalgia...

veni vedi LSE...

There are some very few people, after talking to them you feel delighted and refreshed even though your intimate views differ greatly. Dindu is not one of them.

Dindu: laughs… What? Where did you go? Laughs… People go to London to visit Thames, Tower of London, London Eye, Oxford Street, Leicester, Birmingham and Greenwich kind of world famous places…! More than this desi-lads go there to visit a strip-club. And where are you saying you visited?

Me: LSE man. London School of Economics and Political Science!

Dindu: London school of economics aa? What were you doing there? Who allowed you inside?

Me: I just went inside. To see the place where JFK, KR Narayanan, Amartya Sen, Bertrand Russell and GB Shaw kind of people once studied.

Dindu: laughs… laughs… laughs… What for man? You could have gone to some pub or some stripclub man… They studied there, fine. That doesn't mean you should go there.

Me: Dae! Luus paiyya... See man, the learning in our lives has come to a virtual dead end, so I was just thinking of studying in LSE in my next life. I thought that I will get some good energy from the place and that will help me in my after life. I even bought essays of Milton Friedman and LSE publication of Macroeconomics from the shop there in the campus.

Dindu: laughs… laughs… laughs… a***ole!

Me: f**k yourself man! Hung up the phone

Dindu couldn’t digest the idea of me visiting LSE. But for me LSE was more important than anything else. I haven’t visited much of the London. Not because I didn’t get the opportunity but because I don’t have any desire left to roam around like a tourist and get my pictures clicked in front of buildings, statues and pictures to show them off later. Duh! Nope!

There is a strange dissatisfaction in life which makes me depressed every now and then. I fall to the levels of fatalistic thoughts. Tch! I am not so weak to accept my fate, and I am not so strong to create it on my own. And so, I keep searching for something.

I mean... if a person is asleep and dreaming and his sleep gets disturbed, you can give him a more comfortable warm bed and better dreams to get him back to sleep. But when a person knows he is asleep and dreaming and he is disturbed that he is dreaming and he wants to wake up, what would you do with him...

Anyhow. It's difficult to understand one's own self. Long way to go. The world awaits.

hail capricorns...

( desktop of a dark soul :P.. )

Poor Capricorns – we often suffer from an incorrigible tendency of falling victim to unnecessary frustration and negativity. Just a matter of fact negative trigger from a bad day and we are imagining the darkest of possibilities. At those moments we are so pessimistic that we can almost transform the B +ve blood into B –ve only by talking frustration. The previous ‘i am the flaw…’ was a result of that…

This capricious tendency of us Capricorns is almost similar to the weather at London. Today it is bright, warm and sunny and tomorrow by no distant rhyme or reason it will become dark, cloudy and cold. Sometimes the sunny mornings are colder than the overcast mornings! Not many desi guys like this weather. ‘Crappy weather’ is all they keep saying. I, on the other hand, find it more familiar given my initial years spent in Shimla and Pilani which have almost similar impulsive climate.

Meanwhile, the work is progressing and there are some green signals coming from top. Presentations, documents and statistics… That’s where I am spending most of the time right now. The experience of inventing correct data without doing lab experiments in the engineering labs is coming very handy. This will hopefully be over soon though. Also trying to figure out what I am capable of doing if not this. I could not imagine anything except ‘khetibaaDi’ or perhaps blogging (??) but how about bread, butter and coffee?? So, will now remove the dark gory Ghazals, and listen to Robbie Williams with a bottle of British ale until I find a contingency plan for post pro life:

now what...

This is one of those days when I am feeling tired and exhausted. Not by the work and work-politics, but by the emotions, reasons and indifferences of my own. I love myself with all these conflicting emotions, where one says go for it, other says stay away from it and still other says ‘who cares?’Period! I hate this tendency of mine.

I have been reading a lot about writer’s block, pen’s paralysis but experiencing it today. Not sure if it is that! Not a bad situation at all. There is nothing to rebel against, there is nothing to get inspired from – what can a person write in that situation? Very enlightening state of mind - if you look closely! Those moments when ‘what-nexts’ and ‘now-whats’ hit you like a devastating explosive, destroy all what you built and make you think all over again.

Alas! The restless heart or the brain perhaps! The marvelous machine which receives stimuli, prepares responses and leaves the body to display those responses, a complicated matrix of zeros and ones, a maze of complicated choices.

I was watching the ‘Unlocking the Mystery of Life’ videos (links for the 7 parts are there in the Video Roll) and found some interesting facts about evolution. Just try them in your spare time, might interest you. I used to watch them one every night before going to sleep.

Or try this video/song from movie ‘Wo hu Cang Long’ (Crouching Tiger the Hidden Dragon):



Cheers!

rocket idli…

Living with a Sri Lankan family here in London, as most of us desi guys usually choose to, so that when we land back home our pound-savings give us a lot of rupees to spend. It is 50 GBP a week and decent enough for us desis (well, it depends…) When you are earning as much as a bus driver earns here per month, then you start making economical decisions. Anyhow, here the standard of living is very high.

Now, these Sri Lankan guys are fine in all other aspects (viz. cleanliness, friendliness et al) except their eating habits are ultra-hot. They eat so much meat that had their population been one billion like us Indians, all chicken, lambs and fish would have become extinct species by now. Breakfast, lunch dinner - and you smell meat-cooking all the time inside house. Well, that’s not all – upon that they put so much RED chilly in their food (by that I mean everything – chutney, curry…) that an English person’s rectum would get septic after a single Sri Lankan Meal.

So last night, we got this opportunity to eat Idli with (Sri Lankan) Chutney and (Sri Lankan) Sambar. If I had not eaten some chocolates after that hot cindering chutney and spicy scorching sambar combination, I would not be writing this today. That’s not all. Every time I go for defecating, my a** feels like NASA’s rocket. Phew!!! Drinking lot of juice now to undo the chilly effects. One of my flat mate got loose motions after that meal. Now just imagine what he might be going through!

God bless his a**! Pray for mine!

love at first sip…

First weekend in London and sunny days – what else can one ask for? My first destination – Westminster Abbey, the famous church built in the shape of a cross by Edward the Confessor.

Best way to travel in London is the tube (i.e. the underground metro as we have in Delhi and Kolkata!). Best is to buy one oyster card for the zones you want to travel and tubes and buses are at your service anytime anywhere within the zones. Transportation is extremely simple and well documented here. If one understands English, he or she can get around this city without any problem.

So I get down at Westminster underground and head towards House of Commons and see the Big Ben. Wo man! It’s huge and unbelievable piece of architecture. General public is not allowed inside the premises, so I head towards the Westminster Abbey - just a walk from the House of Commons. When it is sunny in London, it is heaven. There is no dust on the roads, no noises, no sweat… I mean superb. 10 GBP and you get to see the Westminster Abbey from inside – worth it. All important people of the Kingdom are buried in this abbey. Technically I was walking over hundreds of dead bodies. But it was peaceful and awe inspiring architecture. I saw the graves of Sir Isaac Newton, Clement Attlee, George Eliot and many others. Especially the grave of the unknown warrior grabbed my curiosity. Dead body of a British army soldier (name unknown, rank unknown) was brought in 1920 from France and buried here. History has always been a boring subject when it comes to reading, but when I come to see it in front of my eyes it turns into a fascinating story.

Since it is the time of the Easter, I get to hear songs quire songs as well, which I cannot understand “at all”. Nice experience though. Next stop – Trafalgar Square, nice place, the Nelson's Column is awesome structure. Every place has an interesting story attached to it. Nice.

Then a Big Mac at Mc D. Well, my first Mc D experience. Had never been to a Mc D in India, only tried Subway, Dominoes and Pizza Hut (in descending order of liking). Took a walk beside Thames and then came the time to fall in love for the first time.

No, no! Please don't misunderstand; it is not the love between a guy and a girl. Guy sees the girl and girl sees a guy and they fall in love. That sort of thing happens to me at least thrice in a day and even more number of times in weekends. It was the time to enter a classic pub and taste the “strongbow” beer (it’s called cider here, but doesn’t matter – what’s in a name… after all!) of London. It was love at first sip. With strongbow and indirectly with the beer of London – there is something very strange about the beer here.

You drink as much as you want, next morning you will forget that you drank beer last evening. In India, it is not the same. First problem is we have limited brands back home – King Fisher, Royal Challenge, Budweiser (which has only recently come), Fosters and those local ones (viz. thunderbolt, zingaroo, bansanti…) which are often used in the initial stages in colleges to baptize a potential boozer into an evolutionary talented drunkard. Then, when I drink a beer in India, I will remember for a week that I drank it. That strange feeling will remain with me. But here it is different. First thing is there are many brands. Till now I have had Guiness, Stalk, Strongbow, Beck and Heineken and there are still many names I can’t even spell. And after drinking them, you will simply forget them as if you drank some juice or water or some mango-lassi. Simply superb beer! They taste very different and very nice.

The place is slowly getting into the nerves. I’ve already fallen for the beer and the Berger. Will be eagerly waiting for the next weekend. Cheers!

God? no thanks...

God has always been a favorite subject of unending desultory debates. That's why I do not like to spend any time on that. But then discussions pop up out of nowhere and you just want to talk your brains out because you don't want to miss the chance of having company of the other person. But at the end of discussion, no result! Phew!

I don't know what, who or where the God is. May be I don't want to know. Or may be I don't believe in the concept that for everything, God is the responsible person or thing or whatever. I mean, if I have something good in me or something bad in me – I don't like to attribute that to God. I don't like the idea that my life and my destiny is not in my control. Anyhow… There are different views.

I just know what I like, what I don't like, what I am, what I am not, what my strengths are and what I am afraid of… that's enough for me. When it comes to end, I just want to be complete. Anyways, this never ends…

A more fundamental question that sticks like a leech is 'what should one do when one likes something/someone'. To go out and grab it is the easiest possible answer. But whatever or whoever it is - is only temporary, ephemeral. It's like water flowing over the hands. If you close the fist, you've got nothing. Best way is to keep hands open and let the water flow from above it. It can never be yours, you can just let yourself be...

Meanwhile, let me share this photolog, (I lack modesty! All photographed by me :)..) actually the moments when I felt near to something which is the depth of me. And a song, a recent favourite by Carla Bruni (Yup! The Sarkozy legend.. Oh Man! She is beautiful.. Check out the mouth-organ music that starts from 1:52..):



I don't know... but I think this (the song!) is God Level! Just read the lyrics...

Come, let me sing into your ear;
Those dancing days are gone,
All that silk and satin gear;
Crouch upon a stone,
Wrapping that foul body up
In as foul a rag:
I carry the sun in a golden cup.
The moon in a silver bag.

Curse as you may I sing it through;
What matter if the knave
That the most could pleasure you,
The children that he gave,
Are somewhere sleeping like a top
Under a marble flag?
I carry the sun in a golden cup.
The moon in a silver bag.

I thought it out this very day.
Noon upon the clock,
A man may put pretense away
Who leans upon a stick,
May sing, and sing until he drop,
Whether to maid or hag:
I carry the sun in a golden cup,
The moon in a silver bag.

Phew!

tch...

Presentations.. Talks.. Documents..

It all started last year, when Thomsons bought Reuters for $17.2 billion. After that Thomsons CEO retired and Tom Glocer (Reuters CEO) became the CEO of the merged company. Strange thing if you ask me – ‘get bought and become the CEO…’ strange! Mergers and Acquisitions…

I was thinking about this strange M&A in a barber’s shop in Madhapur, Hyderabad. I don’t have much hair left to be cut, but just to give my head a compact look I entered the shop. ‘If your barber is bald, stay away from his scissor…’ is usually what I tell others, because whenever I see my deforested head in the mirror I try to recollect the number of bald barbers who had my head at their disposal at some point of time in the past. Sigh! The barber (who was bald!) made me sit in his execution chair, covered me down neck with the cloth, cut one side of my hair and went for a tea. I instinctively cringe at such situations where a person de-prioritizes his or her work for something less important at the moment. What could I do! He came back, turned on to a telugu movie in television and leisurely started sipping his tea, as if I didn’t exist. I mean… what I could do!

To understand this behavior, one really needs to know what happened to Madhapur (the place where incident happened) during last two years. IT came to Hi Tech City and Madhapur was the village between the IT city and residential city. The economy of this village grew like a horny teenager’s dick. But somehow, only the dick grew and the brains remained unchanged and ungrown. That’s the condition of this village right now - an overgrown economy running on the power of pounds and dollars and a bad sense of expenditure of the IT professionals. Anyhow, I was about to leave this village the next day.

Hmm! Now I am in London. In IT terms – I have come to the ‘onsite’. It all happened so fast, I could not even know myself that I am going to be in London in just a matter of four days. HYD to DEL to HEATHROW – had two shots of vodka in the flight and reached London without much boredom.

Cultural shock!!! That’s what happened to me once I landed here. Everything seems to be running with a perfect discipline. People follow rules, streets are clean, nobody honks… I mean for a person who has lived in Hyderabad and Delhi, London is a land of nirvana. It’s a cold place – you can’t go out without covering your body properly with warm clothes - reminded me of my childhood days of Shimla’s winter. Nothing surprising that once Shimla was the summer capital of these guys!

Oh yes! Forgot about the ‘Presentations.. Talks.. Documents..’ So when M&A happens, IT application integration is the next thing to happen. It was very cruel start of the week with making presentations for the people to understand what should be done and what should not be done. Screwed it up anyhow today.. I am not as good in speaking as I (think) am in writing. Pshaw! Feeling very dejected by the way the presentation went! Tch!

charity begins at pub...

"When one is drunk, one tends to speak the truth" goes the age old cliché in the Boozers' Bible. Keeping aside the New Year resolutions for a while, Dindu and I were in this resto-pub last weekend. My limit is 60 ml. After that I start seeing things more vaguely clear. Dindu's limit is 180 ml, but his supernatural bird eye view becomes active as soon as the first drop of alcohol goes inside him. And then begins the conversation, where almost everything is discussed once again in the same old monotonous way - from marriage to monogamy, from racism to religion, from sex to sensex, from poverty to privatization, from girls to globalization - you name it.

Dindu: Macha! Why don't you order another large?

Me: No Thanks! I am done.

Dindu: You don't know.. A man is mortal only until his first kiss and second drink..

Me: Dae! I don't want to achieve half-nirvana. Perhaps I will cross one drink limit only when I am going to become fully immortal.. You know what I mean right.. he he he..

Gobhi Manchurian arrives; Dindu snatches the plate from waiter's hands, places two tiny pieces in my plate and starts eating the rest.

Dindu: I want to earn a lot of money and do some charity, like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. I want to do something so that I am useful to at least four people around me.

Me: Don't worry man! You will be useful to four people. You, your wife and your two children. You will do a lot of charity.

Dindu: Dae! No kidding. I am serious. I really want to be useful.

Me: Ok man! No more drinks for you. Finish this and we are off.

It was the deepest corners of Dindu speaking - the desire to be useful. But just by desiring if one could get everything I would have dated Kangana Ranaut, Katrina Kaif, Jessica Alba, Kate Moss, Rachel Weisze etc etc (you name) by now.

...

(Sigh! I go into a reverie of one of these ethereal beauties sitting with me instead of the drunk-and-about-to-puke-his-brains-out-Tambi)

...

Most of people want to do charity. Some in even big way - Gates, Buffet likes. In my opinion these guys (Gates, Buffet) have already done a lot of charity by creating so many jobs and opportunities and by making things easy. What they are doing now, by giving away the wealth they have accumulated, is just the visible part of their charity.

Charity for most of the people means giving away the money. And mostly those people feel the urge for charity, who possess enough disposable income, which again depends on person's individual view of when his or her income crosses the disposable threshold. A person earning 8 lpa might not feel like charity, whereas a person with 3 lpa might consider doing it. Nothing bad about that as such, but it is difficult for me to digest the idea of giving away money to some ‘xyz’ foundation without knowing what they are going to do with it. I am ultra cynical. And I am always afraid that the collected money will be used by some people in buying tickets for watching a live India Australia match.

'Break the knees of a poor man, then give him crutches to walk' - This is the real definition of charity, as I look around. Society first makes the poor man and then searches for people to do charity to help the poor man out. Society first prepares the criminal, and then cries out to ban the capital punishment. I mean... give me a break.

May be it’s our Indian DNA. People have lived with monarchy for so many centuries, how democracy can suddenly become our culture in just sixty years. Democracy has never been our way of life until after 1947. Democracy was thrown on us Indians who were habitual of living as subjects of Emperors and Dynasties. May be that’s one of the reasons why still dynasties rule us – Gandhis, Nehrus, Scindias, Rajas… Duh! Or may be because after independence we blindly copied the architecture of government and economy from Soviet Union! I am not sure…

I just wonder how cultures become prominent in a society. Why don’t we throw the garbage in a bin instead of on the road? Why don’t we pay taxes? Why don’t we go the right way while driving? Why do we insist on hanging onto old useless customs? Well, one doesn’t have to answer them… just need to think... the answers may come for better…

Meanwhile, I dumped Dindu at his house and flew back to Hyderabad.

Next morning Dindu woke up, called me and said 'Dae! I gave the waiter a tip of 500 rupees! Why didn't you stop me a**h***?!?'

I said 'Relax machi! Just assume that it was charity for the poor man!'

day of freyja…

Note: Only applicable in those areas which observe Dress Down custom.

Apart from Black Friday (any one of several historical disasters that happened on Fridays) and Good Friday (commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus) there is one Casual or Dress Down Friday in the popular modern culture which generally makes Friday more conspicuous than other days of the otherwise dull week. Following is a small attempt in understanding what makes a Friday, Friday:

1. On Friday suddenly one starts becoming aware of the feminine presence around the work place, which is normally absent on other days. That is, from Monday till Thursday a person who does not notice the lady sitting right next to his desk will suddenly starts noticing her with complete awe and surprise on Friday. Figuratively, female population suddenly gets accentuated on this day.

This is attributed to the chemical reaction undergoing across the neurons of female brain because of which the ladies who possess a decent outer frame start fitting themselves inside attractive casual attire, sometimes exaggerated with artificial beauty equipments. And this casual attire suddenly makes their presence more visible. This is the biggest phenomenon which makes Friday, Friday. The reason why neurons undergo this strange chemical reaction remains the subject of an open ended debate.

2. Another phenomenon attributed to Friday is that the weekly alcohol and cigarette consumption curve undergoes a sharp upward move during Friday nights among phenomenally confused males. This in turn, often, triggers the open ended debate mentioned above.

3. In most Germanic Languages Friday is named after Freyja who is a major goddess in Germanic paganism symbolizing love, beauty and fertility. Freyja is described as the fairest of all goddesses, and people prayed to her for happiness and love. Freyja was also associated with war, battle, death, magic, prophecy, and wealth, which makes it very essential for males to keep a healthy distance from the Freyja's Friday Feminine Effect.

4. In astrology Friday is connected with planet Venus and since Women are from Venus, it is assumed that this day their presence becomes more visible. But there is an opposition to this explanation because the same is not applicable to Tuesdays, since Men are considered to have descended from Mars and Tuesdays belong to Mars. Instead, on Tuesdays most men are found praying the celibate god of Hindu Mythology - Hanuman. It is also believed that Men subconsciously prepare on Tuesdays by requesting Lord Hanuman to give them strength and purity to stay away from the ill effects of the upcoming Fridays. Adam and Eve eating apple in the garden of Eden is again believed to have happened on Friday. It is said that Adam had failed to offer his prayers to Lord Hanuman the previous Tuesday!

This list is not exhaustive and there are many other interesting and eye opening explanations which could be found using prevailing search engines and encyclopedias. One must also go through a number of white papers produced by academicians who spent their lives trying explaining this perplexing phenomenon.

mosquito, my enemy…

Merry Christmas all… Hope Santa Clause finds you and gives you your expensive cherished gifts.

Last night, I got inspired by the mosquitoes of my room. And I am so overwhelmed that I am compelled to share this with all you people on the other frail ends of optical fiber. Before that let me tell you that I am anti-mosquito-repellent activist, i.e. I don’t (and because I cannot) use mosquito repellents (coils, chemicals…) because they set my head into dizzy motions. And at the same time, I discourage everyone to use them, because they are not only not-good and not-healthy for the hexapoda-insecta-culicidae, but also they are not-good and not-healthy for the bipoda-chordata-homosapiens.

So, to safeguard myself from bites of the six legged insect, one day I got myself one mosquito net for 105 rupees. And trust me; this small one-time-investment is far and far better than 45 nights (void) guarantee given by those mosquito repellents in the shelves of the super market. So…I take this net home and tie it above and across my bed. Voila! Not a single mosquito in the 6-by-3-by-3 cuboid fortress of mine. I sleep well for a week. But after a week, mosquitoes *somehow* found a way to enter the chamber! Now you see… one side of this cuboid chamber remains vulnerable because I also have to enter it through this side. So after releasing extra blood to my left brain, I see that all mosquitoes are perched on *this vulnerable side* now, that too at the very bottom where the edge of the net meets the bed. They bloody knew that once I lift it to enter, they get a chance to enter too! Damn! They are genius, they adapt, and they are not as dumb as I earlier used to think they were.

But anyways this was a challenge to my egotistic-(-accidental-)-engineer-self. I collect data… I observe… I analyze… I find solution… So now I block this side permanently and start entering from the other side. The entry side will be interchanged every week given the adaptation time horizon of mosquitoes is one week. And this strategy will be reviewed every night based on the number of enemies entering the cuboid fortress. If at all any unfortunate mosquito enters the chamber, he loses his life! Ahh! I am a genius… a stochastic savant!

Kuchh bhi ho… After seeing this, I became a fan of this seemingly insignificant blood-sucking manifestation of life. Now I give these mosquitoes a stature of my annoying neighbors and respect of my enemies. In their honor I leave with these words by Mr Bashir Badr:

matar-paneer & more...

Matar-Paneer is my favorite. Not only for eating, but also it is favorite dish when my cooking instincts take over my eating emotions. Oh yeah! Yours truly cooks and is only a few steps and recipes away from being called a great chef… trust me… no??... Tch!… ok, may be a hundred steps… Well… whoever has eaten what I cooked, none of them complained food poisoning… So at least that’s first step towards being a great chef, isn’t it… :P

When a person gets infected by the pest of philosophy he starts thinking philosophy everywhere – be it lavatory, observatory, cemetery or even a kitchen. So, forgive me for what comes next. Asking ‘What is cooking?’ is the question similar to asking ‘What is life?’ Cooking is not just about putting matar and paneer in the pressure cooker with right mix of water, spices and salt, and getting appreciation from the matar-paneer-eaters. It’s lot more than that!

Cooking is an art. Cooking is a science. Art – when practiced, science – when perceived. It is not about just knowing the ingredients of the mouth-watering dishes; it is about knowing one’s own ingredients. It is about knowing one’s hunger and the emptiness. It is about understanding what one has and what one lacks, what one needs and what one wants. It is about trying to understand and appreciate the fact that after eating, the tomato becomes the blood, rice becomes the flesh, the carrot becomes the cornea, paneer becomes the pelvis and matar becomes the muscle.

From cutting of vegetables to washing of utensils, every aspect of cooking is important and tells something about the life. And cooking, just like life, is never complete!

Hope you are still hungry :P...! So... When can I experiment my matar-paneer on you?

Bon Appétit!