nostalgia@desktop...

Eye@5042kms
Eye@9.76kms

Eye@1.46 kms

Eye@377 m

Eye@101 m

And Nostalgia...

idea(tic) indigestion...

Dindu isn’t very happy with his legendary name – Dindigul Krishnamachary Senthil Santhosh Srinivasan. Somebody told him his name sounds more like IUPAC name of an organic compound, something like 1-iso-2-cyno-tetra-butanoic acid. I told him - ‘what’s in a name machi, dindu who lives in chennai will remain dindu by any other name’. It gave him some confidence and last time when he left the conversation he was headed towards the beach near his house, for solitude or for sinking his ass in Bay of Bengal - no idea, until...

After a few days, Dindu pings me long distance and says:

Dindu: Macha! I have found out a great secret of life.

Me: Hey!!! Good man! What is it? Some fountain of youth or something, or some money tree, or a power to read other people’s minds, or the answer to 'why-the-hell-am-I-doing-my-job'?

Dindu: Tch, no da! It’s the omnipresent law, the simple fact, which is so common that common man fails to see it.

Me: Duh! What’s that?

Dindu: A common man sees other people the same way s/he sees a tree.

Me: Ohhhkk!!! Silence for a couple of seconds… more silence…

Me: So??? What does that mean?

Dindu: What I mean is, when an average person comes in contact with some other person or thing, s/he judges the person or the thing with the immediate knowledge about the person or the thing and the way that information is correlated to the person who is making the judgment.

Me: Ok! I don’t understand a thing.

Dindu: Figuratively, a person looks at the branches of the tree and says tree is like this or like that. Very few care about the roots of the tree. Also, the judgment might differ depending on the current state of interest of the person.

Me: How?

Dindu: Assume there is a huge tree with lot of branches and leaves. Now, if a person wants to take shelter from the sun or the rain and comes across this tree, this is in interest of the person – the tree is a haven. If a person wants to build a house on the same spot as the tree or a person’s kite is stuck in the tree, then the tree becomes trouble. You see?

Me: So? How does this relate to person to person relations?

Dindu: Similarly, when a person comes in contact with other person, the quality and strength of this contact link depends on their immediate state of interest and their immediate knowledge about each other.

Me: But who has the time to dig the earth and look at the roots?

Dindu: That’s the reason of failure of so many relationships. It’s like two beggars begging each other assuming that the other is an emperor. Eventually they come to realize that both of them are beggars and then they fall apart (source). Moreover, if you are looking for diamonds you’ve got to dig, if you want dust it’s everywhere!

Me: Whoa, that's heavy! I will get indigestion man. Phew! What the heck are you eating these days?

Dindu: Dae! Nothing da... I am just spending more time in the beach…

Me: Tch! Ok da, after this over dose of your brain, I need to go pinch a loaf…

Dindu: Dae fu****r!

Me: Can’t stop man!!! Meanwhile check this. Bye bye…

Dindu: Puranboka. Wait!!!!

history repeats itself...

You can run, you can hide, but you cannot escape it... This time it seems viruses were waiting in the waters of the swimming pool. Oh! sneeze... sneeze... cough... cough... When will we find cure for common cold! Given following statistics, scientists should seriously get some medicine to eradicate it. Something like, the vaccinations that happen when you are a kid and then the country becomes disease free! cough... cough... sneeeeezee...

i don't...

The first lines of warning from Fight Club:

If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all who claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think everything you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told you should want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned - Tyler.


‘Writing is a great habit. It brings discipline in thoughts, precision in words and clarity in ideas.’ Dindu told me this when I last had a conversation with him. I was amazed at the concept and happy at this realization which happened to his otherwise lazy arse, a little while after he started writing seriously.

My conversations with Dindu are never without arguments, simply because our points of view do not match. He believes in God and I don’t. He thinks ‘A’ and I think ‘Z’. He is SRK fan and I think he sucks. He doesn’t believe in taking bath, but I can’t do a single day without taking bath - and similar such small things where I am on the North Pole and he is stuck up somewhere at the 75 degrees of latitude down in the southern hemisphere. But it is good that we never misunderstood our differences in opinion as animosity. ‘Life goes on’ - we quip after we are done with all abusing and shouting out special character words on each other, where usually our arguments end. Next time, though, same argumentative cycle gets repeated.

This time the topic was the old ‘ghisa pitaa’, monotonous, stereotype, most discussed subject which haunts the-twenty-something’s heavily – marriage. You never intend to end up discussing something gross like that, but then at one moment you might be discussing the chaos at Terminal 5 of Heathrow airport and suddenly there will be nothing to talk about and at that very moment someone will ask ‘So! When are you getting married?’

Dindu: Dae! I heard inflation is going to 7%. Is that good or bad for me?

Strange! Tambi interested in inflation?!?

Me: Of course bad man, unless you are a ruthless hedge fund manager who sits in the-top-floor-river-facing-cabin at HSBC branch for investment banking. Inflation of 7% means an invisible hand is eating away the value of money which you have kept in your savings account. If you have 100k Rs in your savings account right now, they will be worth 93k Rs after one year given you don’t get any interest on your savings. So you need to save the value of your money by investing it into some investment instruments like Stocks, bonds or fixed deposits.

Dindu: Hmm… So! When are you getting married?

I hope you can imagine the level of frustration a person might have had here. I was religiously explaining inflation to him and even an iota of his brain wasn't interested in that. What happens when red hot iron is super-cooled with dry ice? It gets pissed off, big time!!! Apparently all the inflation chat was just a precursor to this.

Me: What the f*** happened suddenly!!!

Dindu: I might be getting married to a girl soon.

Me: Good for you man that it’s a ‘girl’ and not a ‘boy’. You will do well.

Dindu: Dae B******. No kidding. When are you getting married?

Didn’t he get the message with ‘What the f***!!!’? Patience… Take a deep breath… Count till five… 1… 2… 3… 4… 5…

Me: Cough… Cough… whenever I get the guts to say ‘I do’.

Dindu: Why do people get married man?

Me: You should tell me that a**h****! You are the one who is getting into it.

Dindu: I don’t know man. I am getting into it because all my cousins are done with it. My parents are now forcing me to get into it.

Me: That’s good enough a reason tambi! They do it; I do it - simple valid reason. My Mama asks me to brush my teeth, I do. My Pop asks me to have hairline in the left side of the head inside of in the middle, I do. Who the hell am I? Wake up man! I have told you so many times already that people have different reason of doing what they do. So you need to find your own.
Dindu: Macha! I have been thinking a lot about this from past few weeks. I have also written my thoughts about it in my journal. What I have concluded is that, marriage is not a law of nature. It is just an institution established by human species in early times of its evolution. What I can imagine is – as human population grew and disorder prevailed in society, some scholarly people introduced this concept, which is nothing greater than the concept of ‘currency notes’.

Me: Yeah, if you say so. Basically it helped people to identify who is whose father/mother and which one is which one’s child. Basic law of nature is – every species struggles to keep itself alive. Darwin! But you need to remember that we no longer follow nature’s code. We are the most intelligent species. We follow social code now which is smarter than natural laws. So better be realistic.

Dindu: True. We might have been able to outsmart nature in some ways, but we will never be able to overpower it. And I am not only talking about the nature outside of us, I am talking about our very own nature. The nature, that makes us feel our emotions - happiness, anger and pain… that nature.

Me: Are you trying to say that there is still some natural reason left which can justify people getting married?

Dindu: Yes da! There has to be some fundamental law. Otherwise why would a man get attracted towards a woman and vice versa?

Me: But how will you explain men getting attracted to men and women getting married to women though not enough instances in India till now.

Dindu: That’s not natural man. That’s bloody gay thing. That’s psychological disorder man. Even science has proved it.

Me: Ha ha ha… Crap! What exactly are you trying to say man? Where the f*** is this conversation headed?

Dindu: I am not trying to make any scholarly hypothesis here boss. I just want to understand a few things before I get laid.

Me: You don't have to be married to get laid. Understand like what?

Dindu: I want to understand why parents love their children, even among animals?

Me: Snake eats its own eggs. Cats and Lions – they eat their own infants.

Dindu: Ok da…!!! Most of the animals! But what makes us humans to love our child even when it is disabled and cannot speak and walk? Why do saints preach that we should be compassionate towards criminals and diseased? Why does a person fall in love, get married and then one day get divorced?

Me: Answer to last question might be because we are driven by our needs and when needs are satisfied we no longer care about the objects which we earlier used to satisfy those needs. I don’t know about the first two.

Dindu: But then there are people who stay married for whole of their lives.

Me: Come on man! Life is not algebra where two plus two is always four. It’s complex. You make mistakes, you learn, you move on. You make choices. Nothing is forever here. May be your first marriage won’t be successful. Try second. If that fails, try third. What’s the big deal in that? There is still polygamy in many cultures. You never stay with your first mobile phone forever, do you? As technology advances and your mobile-phone doesn’t change with it, you change it! You upgrade.

Dindu: What the f*** man. This is not a joke.

Me: I am not laughing a**h***. First of all it was you who turned this conversation from inflation to marriage. And now you don’t know what you really wanted to discuss. What the f*** man.

Dindu: Why the f*** are you so arrogant man?

Me: Look who is saying this!

Dindu: F*** this. Life goes on.

Me: C’est la vie.

So I log-off and tune into this new song to which I have got addicted to. Mad World by Gary Jules which says:

I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad;
the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had..

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:

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.

naansense begins...

Triple convergence of work: (Title Copied from World is Flat by Thomas Friedman)

Today, in IT industry there are three kinds of people at work. Conversely this does not necessarily mean that there are three types of workers.

Type1 – Developers, testers and programmers kind who do the work;
Type2 – Leaders, specialists, coordinators kind who make the work done by Type1 workers; and,
Type3- Managers, consultants, associate-in-charge kind who advise Type2 workers how to make the work done by Type1 workers.

Work, like everything else, has evolved from being pristine and individualistic to being civilized, sophisticated and ritualistic, where it is difficult to identify what work really is, who really does it, and whether it is really done or not.

For such sophisticated competitive environment International Institute of Idle Techies has come up with a survival kit for IT professionals.

Survival Kit for an IT professional:

At Office:

1. Internet enabled work stations.
2. gtalk/yahoo-messenger/gmail/meebo.
3. Orkut enabled proxy.
4. Ear/head phones and a music collection on some shared location.
5. If 4 not found then iPOD/mp3 player.
6. If 4 and 5 not found then Camera, mp3 enabled mobile phone.

At Home:

7. Laptop/Desktop.
8. Internet connectivity.
9. Maggi packets.
10. Cigarettes (Optional).
11. Pizza hut/Dominos/Subway contact numbers.
12. Cooler/Air conditioner during summer.
13. TATA sky connection with NEO Sports (for males).
14. Porn Interesting movies collection (for males).

Naansense ends!

Wishing you happy new year!

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!

on the run...

There is no internet at home currently. Though the address says Hi Tech City on one of the lines, there is nothing Hi Tech around and about it. Optical fiber hasn’t reached there and communication towers seem to shy away from showering their radio waves around the area. That obviated even the option of having an expensive USB plug and surf device. And without internet at home, blogging is no more exciting.

Though office has 24 by 7, 100 mbps broadband connection, it does not have a conducive surrounding for blogging, especially when there are so many beautiful things to look around and after! I mean… oh! You understand that don’t you!

Meanwhile, I am keenly following the ‘My Brilliant Brain’ series on Nat Geo these days. Apparently the left side of my back head has started showing the signs of impact it suffered two years ago. May be that’s the reason my logical brain doesn’t work much! ;)… The documentary will be aired at 2200 hours on NAT GEO every day till Dec 21st. There will be four people from India, out of those two will be from Hyderabad. Konkona Sen Sharma will be hosting the show for India's series.

So for now, I take leave with the following words by Mr Nidah Fazli:

eerie...

This video is a result of my retreat to the village recently. Interestingly I was bit by a spider there on my neck! I wished I could metamorphose into a spiderman, but as it turned out my neck grew skin infection which stayed for more than a week! And upon that, to heal the infection I did not consult any doctor, but a faith healer of my village who read some mantras and smeared the wound with ashes! Creepy little village...



Idea : I.
Music : From Pink Floyd's 'Atomic Heart Mother'.
Pictures : From Here and There.

basic instincts...

One thing I am pretty sure of is that – imagination or reason cannot give us the power to take decisions. The choices we make are the result of our instinctive power. That is, our instincts give us the power to make choice, whereas imagination and reason just give it a direction.

For instance, I can stand looking at a mountain thinking that I must climb the mountain. I can bring out the good points and the bad points about the adventure by my reason. But until my instincts guide me, I won’t be able to take even a single step towards the mountain leave alone reaching the summit.

Most of the choices suffer from this instinctive breakdown. Imagination helps us in seeing ourselves in new situation. Reason helps us listing out all pros and cons, quid pro quos. But the first step is taken always by the instincts.

That’s where the power actually lies – in the instincts. You can imagine doing a thing, reason for the good and bad but to take the first step – you need instincts.

Instincts are like the powerhouse of progress. Reason is the tool to be prepared. And imagination is a tool to see the new.

So, now the concern should be to strengthen the instincts, clarify the reason and polish the imagination.