screwdriver

Blast from the Past

2010-10-29T05:56:00.000-07:00

Sincerest apologies to people who did read my blog. It has been a LONG time since i wrote anything. Well to my credit I did write an article but that was supposed to go to my CV, not to my blog. If people who see my CV ever read my blog, I would be dependent on my wife financially for ever.
So what was the excuse for this lack of muse. You see I was planning a wedding. And all the while I thought how I would write a big fat blog about it. I am still contemplating about the first sentence. I was contemplating about it about half an hour ago. So I thought lets get some inspiration from myself. I opened my own blog and reread all my posts.
A funny thing cropped up. I used to dabble in some poetry before. Some of my earlier posts have a few poems. And thats just a tip of the iceberg. I suddenly remembered how much I used to write poems when i was young - really young. Maybe some people still have copies of the poems I wrote. That was funny , because I always used to write in small slips of paper, and used to give them away. They were small pieces maybe 10- 12 lines at most. And to people who are having high hopes , let me warn you - all my poems were solely concentrated in rhyming; nothing more.
I actually sat down to write a poem - ( wow talk about poetic flair!) and first of all just think of a word. Now the most difficult task , get a word which rhymes with the previous word. Once you have it then write down two lines. Now see if there is any remote connection between the 2 lines. If there is some connection then voila- a poem is born. 5 sets of rhyming words and a whole poem is constructed. They were stupid, silly, idiotic and frankly I do not remember ANY of them !
For a person who used to write for no rhyme or reason, I am left with no rhyme- only reason !

N.B. The wedding has been planned and it is over with. However I still do not promise a big fat post .
As Rene Descartes would have written had there been ink in his pen : " I am thinking " .

Outpoxed

2010-02-04T05:12:00.000-08:00

Recently my command over the English language has transcended great lows such that, the command has been transformed to a mere whimper. I am eagerly waiting for fall when someone from the natives ( read US of A ..........) comes to teach me the language yet again. Till then please bear while i coin new terms and entertain you with flowery language.
Question.: What is the term used when a certain disease fools 3 doctors ?
Answer: Outpoxed.

Why ?
It all started on that fateful saturday. I had gorged on some good chinese food in Ni Hao, a full 7 course, leaving nothing which was open in the buffet. I was a bit feverish but who cares. A full stomach deserves some respect and the best respect you can give is a good nights sleep. Being the very respectful types I went to sleep . Next morning when I woke up, the fever had increased , a slight headache had reared its head and so had some bright red spots on my chest and hands. Uncomfortable as it was I thought it might be some reaction to the chinese cuisine i had the night before. Gulping down an anti-allergic I hoped that the spots would go away and I would be fit and fine again.
However the spots had other plans. Suddenly they displayed their love for mathematics and started multiplying. I cancelled my plans for the day with my friends, when suddenly one of them remarked that it might be chicken pox. Then we all chickened out of the idea. Outside the temperature was -10 C. It was snowing. Which bloody virus could survive in such low temperatures. Must be strong allergy! Gulped down some more of anti-allergic and waited.
By Monday morning the spots were displaying advanced mathematics with a heavy influence of the exponential function. I perceived this to be a good time to test the doctors in Holland. I tried getting an appointment. I did not get one for the day. Apparantly it was not an emergency case. Well to me it was not. So I got an appointment on tuesday. Meanwhile I had to bear the pain !
Jumping over unimportant details I skip to the part where i met my doctor. Dr. Kocks was a young man, not much older than me guess fresh out of medical school. he was all smiling when he asked me my name, my complaints and other chit chat. However when I took off my shirt to introduce him to my new friends the smile vanished. He left his chair came close, peered over a few of the spots and gave his diagnosis, "I think it is chicken pox". I thought "Cool" Atleast now I know what happened to me. Then he looked at my face and looked at the spots. And spoke the magical words " I am not sure, I will have one of my colleagues take a look." And then he went out of the room. "Shit ! " was the only thing I could think of. After a few minutes a middle aged lady enters with Doctor Kocks. She is the other doctor on call. One look at me and she turns to Doctor Kocks and they start discussing in Dutch . My Dutch is broken so the few words i could gather is
" It looks like chicken pox to me"
"See the boils have fluid inside then"
"Definitely not allergy "
"But this is very rare"
"Still seems like chicken pox"

She turns to me and asks if I had ever had chicken pox as a child. I say No. She retorts "Are you sure". I laugh at her face. "Come on I am from India, I know what chicken pox is "
She looks at me , then at doctor Kocks and says "Most likely it is chicken pox" And she leaves the room.
I sigh. Atleast I know whats wrong which me. I sit down again. Suddenly The lady's head reappears from the door. She has a guest with her. The third doctor on call was suddenly free and he too was invited to give his opinion. Some more conversations in dutch. Finally the other two doctors leave leaving me to my fate.
Doctor Kocks sits down and pronounces "We think you have Chicken pox. Normally this happens only to children and it is quite rare for adults to have it. We have not seen many cases like this before. So here is what I will do . I will first take pictures of you. Then I will take a swab and send it to the lab to confirm. And then I will give you some antibiotics for secondary infection."
As he dutifully complied to his words, I thought - Bummer!!! this means I will be in quarantine. He hasnt mentioned anything about hospital admission so I will be at home.
I asked him" After how many days do I join my work " Oh ! he replied "You can go from tomorrow"
F**K!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I thought.
In India doctors advise atleast 2-3 week quarantine. This guy is sending me to infect others from the next day itself!
Anyway I take my prescription give him my thanks and walk out of the hospital.

Oh! Yes. It was indeed pox as was confirmed by the marks on all over my body after I got cured.
And I still think My photos will be displayed to the University medical Students and told " See this is how Chicken pox looks in adults. Side effects are meningitis, brain inflammation and a searing pain in the head as if people are hammering inside your head for all day"

Shallow to Deep

2009-12-11T15:57:00.000-08:00

I am bored. I am bored of inverse beam dynamics. I am bored of Runge Kutta. I am bored of fourier expansions and FFT's . So I remembered that I have a blog. By the time you read this, my boredom will have been supressed by the pile of work which is hanging over my head.

So after a long hiatus, my blog is back. And this time I etch my journey from shallow to deep.
About more than a year ago , I was under the impression that I could sink spectacularly. If Hydrophobia is a legitimate word, I had hydroparanoia. Much of it can be blamed to maternal instincts. But as Russell Crowe said as Dr John Nash, I have been "terrified, mortified, petrified" by the very prospect of jumping into a swimming pool.
So I joined swimming lessons at the age of 25. The instructors were of the opnion that they would make a Thorpe or a Phelps out of me. After 2 weeks they realized if they could convert me from a stone to a log it was an enormous feat. Thorpe could wait for another day ... or another lifetime.
Learning to swim in holland was supposedly fun for some of my friends. Or atleast they thought that I was having fun, in such close proximity with bikini clad females in the water. They do not know the ultimate truth of life. When you are in the pool with your life in your hands, sinking one moment and frantically gasping for breath in the next your vision suddenly becomes so poor that you dont even look at the bikinis any more.
It becomes even more gruesome when the person next to you is swimming like a fish, and when you look at yourself you mutter " Naaah !! still a stone".
The Instructors shout from the edge of the pool .... Arms ! Legs ! Lonnnnngggggg !
After some weeks i saw that they left the lane i was swimming and were giving tips to the others. Apparantly I was so poor .. I was dead last of the class. So I told myself, I am going to do it on my own. They havent seen my determination, as hard as a rock. And then i started sinking again. I mean I never knew that throwing arms and legs in water is so damm difficult. If my legs move my arms dont, If my arms move, my legs dont. If some how i manage to do both, water enters my nose, i panick and drink half of the pool.
Then came swimming on the back ! Now that was supposed to be easy. Because in that position you can float easily. True. But only if you have a nose like an elephant.The first time i was floating , i was thrilled. Then came a wave , or so it seemed to me. Suddenly there was water inside my nose And then I started to sink.
Fortunately all this was in the shallow end . So every time I sank, I had solid ground below me and i could stand up again. After some time I thought I could manage swimming in the shallow end. Let me claify by what i mean by swimming . It is moving forward in water without touching the ground with your feet. Since I managed to do that I thought, lets try the deep side.
So i went diving in the deep end.
Till date I have the unique distinction of being the only person in class who had to be saved by the instructor .

I went back to the shallow end !

N.B. : Currently I have lost the onyl distinction I had. I can no longer sink spectacularly

Baigan main mila diya (mixed to the brinjals)

2009-11-11T08:22:00.000-08:00

Excerpts from a movie :
Disclaimer: The actual dialouges are in specific style of Hindi. There is no exact translation possible

Salim : " Arrey main to itna kiya. Tu kya kiya re? Jab Angreza aake Ismail bhai ka shirt faadh ke ,khundal khundal re maara" ( Atleast I did this. What did you do when the foreigners tore Ismail bhai's shirt and beat him black and blue)
a bystander : "Appa ! khundal khundal ke maara Ismail bhai ko " (what ! Ismail bhai got beaten up ")

There are two kinds of people. Those who have seen "The Angrez". And those who will see it.
I saw the Angrez after a long time today. Not that i needed to. I remember all of Salim feku's dialouges by heart, all the tones of Jehangir, the "maa ki kirkiri " of Ismail bhai about "Mallika" and "Angrezaa".
For the uninitiated let me get down to unravelling the mysteries of this movie. For those of you whose dont know it yet, have a quick look in youtube and go through it. Assuming that you have climbed back to your chair after falling down so many times, then you might be able to appreciate whats written. If you read the reviews about the angrez online its all very well written. But its not exactly how the odinary viewer sees it. The Angrez is basically divided into two parts. The scenes with Salim, Ismail and Jehangir- and the rest of the movie. Infact some honourable soul in kgp actually filtered out the good stuff from the rest and posted it on the local net as "Maa ki kirkiri". A fan following ensued, and i am a part of it till today.
Reasons why i would recommend The Angrez
1: How far can you go above and beyond the truth - Ask Salim feku and his encounter with Mallika
2: "Wot diya , Wot diya Wot diya" - Now thats how you thrash someone
3: "Woh mereko malum tumko malum , potti ko malum kya" - try any gimmick to impress a girl ; as long as she does not know you are faking it.
4: How can you take 2-3 hours to reach a place where you can normally reach in 20 mins
5: Khundal khundal ke maara - I have no comments on this one.

But sitting in your room in the cold confines of the studio, you realize that the movie is not complete. The people with whom you shared the movie with made this ever so special.

Jai Bhawavi !

Water on the moon

2009-09-25T01:32:00.000-07:00

After a long hiatus blogging is back. This might be a short one, due to the lack of time available. Recently what caught my fancy was a news article concerning a press release from NASA saying that there has been water found on the moon. Another big step for mankind ? Perhaps , perhaps not! However this post will not be scientific, as i am yet sketchy about the details of the impact of the discovery.
A huge hue and cry has started to erupt, similar to the production of black holes when CERN started their first beams in LHC. (Till today i have to explain to some of the masses that production of a black hole is not as easy as you think ! My fault , as the only example an accelerator physicist can give about his work is the huge extravaganza at CERN).
However when i first heard the news , the name of Georges Remi came to my mind. Years ago a man named Jules Verne wrote about things flying in air and submarines under water. Came true !
Similarly not so long ago Georges Remi (okk Herge for most of you) landed Tintin on the moon and made him discover water on the moon. Being a hardcore Tintin buff , i almost expected this to be true ! Hence no surprises for me.
Wonder which fiction next would turn to fact! but please not a Dan Brown one!

The opposable thumb

2009-08-11T01:36:00.000-07:00

I wonder why i wonder why

I wonder why i wonder

(Richard P. Feynman; Literary assignment in College

"Surely you are joking Mr. Feynman")

Sometimes when i am too lazy to work, i wonder. I wonder at this wonderful thing called the opposable thumb. As I type these words in my keyboard and see my thumb hitting on the spce bar repeatedly, I wonder whether technology would have made any progress had humans not had this opposable thumb. I see young people whip out their cell phones and start talking. i wonder how cell phones would have looked like if we did not have the opposable thumb. Would it have been big, would it have been small or even no existant. At home some one flips on channels using the remote. once again its the opposable thumb. I hop on to my bike and press the brakes. Once again i use my thumb. I injure my thumb and during my meals I am at a loss on how to eat. I could go on about how we use the thumb in our everyday life.The point is this is something we are born with. This we cannot change. This is what makes us humans. Humans do have a superior brain in the entire animal kingdom, but i wonder without the opposable thumb would the superior brain have helped ?

I wonder !

Special request

2009-05-04T14:48:00.000-07:00

This blog is not related to a specific incident. For the past few days certain events have been happening which have tied me down. I will try and write down most of it in this post.
1: Dinner: It was FYSICA 2009. For the uninitiated it was the annual Dutch Physical society meeting . As "emerging" physicists even i attended, the event, with a series of lectures on a plethora of topics . I was planning on attending the series of lectures on Big Bang, especially the theory of inflation (it still is pretty much muddled up to me), along with the existance of magnetic monopoles. At the end of the day there was a special Nobel lecture by Gerard 't Hooft. I was sitting at the back row, and catched a glimpse of the Nobel winner. Sitting there while he talked about the CKM matrix, I wondered, whether I would actually be able to recognize him, should i meet him any time later. Post his lecture we had the dinner arrangements. I dropped my bag off in one of the round tables and stood in a queue to get some grub. We were three desi's, Dr. Shidling, Gourida and I. We were joined by an elderly gentleman from NIKHEF Amsterdam who started talking about Physics and the self conscience. Being Indians we are supposed to understand about spirituality. Suddenly I looked to my left and saw Prof 't Hooft drawing the chair next to me. The next 20 minutes I was speechless. Amartya Sen and Mother Teresa's pictures are the closest I have ever come to a Nobel winner. I sat beside him for ninety minutes, and we didn't talk about physics. The weather , soccer, Brasil ( we had a Brazilian lady with us at the table) , India were the range of topics the table conversed. Or rather the other people conversed. I was mostly silent ! We finished dinner and as we trudged off home, he waved us good bye. A human being ! I do not have a picture with him, but no regrets.

2: Fire: Recently I have moved into a new studio. It was my second night in the new studio, and it was quite some work to unpack and clean stuff. Around 7:30 types , I had finished cooking when i smelt something burning. I checked all the electric connections in the studio and the smell was not coming from any one of them. I opened my window and smelt burnt fumes outside too. I thought might be some of the neighbours cooking in a charcoal fire. I closed my window and tried to ignore the smell. Still it lingered. Suddenly a huge sound bellowed in the building. I opened my door , the fire alarm was blaring on all cylinders. My other housemate Isreal was also out of his room. The stair case was filled with smoke. We tried climbing downstairs and found the smoke growing denser. Israel asked me for the fire extinguisher and tried dousing the source from where it was coming from. No help. It struck us that the fire might be downstairs. We took a towel and dashed for the stairs. It was pitch dark, and we inhaled a lot of smoke. I dont know how Israel got to the door , but we did make it out. By this time people had gathered outside, they had no idea that people were living inside. Flames were coming out from the side of the house. The crowd had called up emergency services and it wasnt long before I heard the all too familiar sirens bellowing at a distance. A police car screeched to a stop near me. 2 officers jumped out and cordoned off the area. The crowd was shooed away. When they heard that I was a resident of the building in flames we ( me and Israel) were given special vantage points so that we could see the flames. Two fire engines coming from both sides of the street simultaneous came to a halt , as firemen climbed out and mad a dash for the building. On the ground floor of the house there is a tatoo shop. Seems the fire had started from there. The fire men used everything to break open the door of the shop, an axe, a battering ram, but the lock would not budge . Finally they got an electric saw. The door was torn to shreds, the lock still stood like the rock of Gibraltor. A Crane followed suit and firemen climbed on to it trying to douse the fire from every angle. Meanwhile the interrogation had started. First it was the Police. Standard questions like name, date of birth, place of birth were asked. Next came the firemen who asked about the house, the floor plane the structure the underlying wooden floors. Finally it was the medicos, who took my enitre medical backgroud trying to gauge if I had inhaled enough CO/CO2 or not. Meanwhile the fire was out. The house was still filled with smoke. The fire men rolled up their hoses and dispatched the crane. Out came the smoke meters. The house was deemed unfit for residence for the night. The good news , our room were not gutted. A fireman accompanied us to our rooms, as we grabbed some essential stuff to spend the night at some friend's place. I looked around and saw that apart from the smoke and the thin layer of soot on everything, the room was not damaged at all. Everything was safe.
It then dawned upon me what had happened !

For people wondering why the name of the post has nothing to do with the contents insie, let me clarify, the special request came from Dharmu da. I quote " You should write a blog rather than put up cryptic status messages"

Yercaud

2009-03-13T12:22:00.000-07:00

Some simple things in life sometimes leave an everlasting impression......

To Sunny, Pinki, Datta and Baka .....................

........................... and not to forget Gopi and his car.

Warning: Long Post

Prelude:

It was sometime around 20th of May. My covansys mail id was abuzz with a chain of mails from Sunny and Datta. It had 2 buzz words - Weekend and Yercaud.

I asked Keerthi about this place and found out that it was near Salem, and it was a hill station. Whatever! I was tired of chennai and wanted a change. Rest was a big unknown.

25th April Friday: I reached home with some cash, as we had to make for the autogas and advance payment for the car. Pinki was still not home. Suddenly Sunny came home with Gopi, the car keys in his hand. And then it struck me. The plans we had made during the entire week were becoming a reality.

There were 5 of us , Sunny, Datta, Pinki, Baka and I. The plan was to leave chennai for the weekend. Sunny wanted to drive. And we all wanted to go to somplace nice. Yercaud some 350 kms away from chennai was touted to be a poor mans Ooty. Ergo that weekend we were off to Yercaud, 4 house mates and 1 guest.

The night was pretty uneventful, except that while parking the car i damaged the bumper. And as Pinki laughed , he christened it "precision driving".

26th April Morning 5.00 AM: We were supposed to leave at 5 but somehow, Sunny still refuses to wake up. Datta was prompt as usual and even Pinki was up. Baka would leave us midway on our return trip, to Bangalore, so he was giving final touches to his packing (well he was packing).

5.30 AM: We are off on the road, finally. What happened in the half hour is still a blur, but never have seen Pinki so excited in Chennai, not even when he finds alu sabji in the meals in GK restuarant. It took us some time to get on the Bangalore highway, but on it Sunny went on a roll. The car sped off and all us were enjoying the beauty outside, and tormenting Pinki inside. We cruised past Vellore. And we were feeling hungry. We pulled over to a roadside eatery, a fancy one too. What followed was one of the best breakfast we have ever had in chennai. There was something called "Kaludosa" which we tried out along with the standard idli, vada and puri. It was hoever the last morsel we would eat for the next 8 hours. With the stomach full, we hit the road once again. It was at this point we decided to take a detour in the way, to try and reach Hogenakkal waterfalls. For people who still do not know this place , you might remember this for the water project dispute. The water in the waterfalls are touted to have medicinal powers to cure ailments. And yes the song "choti si aasha" from the movie Roja was shot here. We got off the Bangalore highway and faced less easy roads past Krishnagiri. Our destination , the junction of Dharmapuri where a right turn would take us to the falls of Hogenakkal. It was hot and the AC in the car was chilled max. We were burning up a lot of gas , but at that moment we really did not care. The only time i left the car was to ask a traffic policeman for directions. A local man , he could not follow my words in english and it was after some theatrics from me and Datta that we got a hint of the way. It was some tricky driving upto hogenakkal, the roads are not so good, with bumps aplenty. There we also faced one of the wider accepted industries in India, Tourist fleecing. To enter Hogenakkal went went through some 5 checkposts all of them managed by locals , who would not budge until you pay Rs 10 for some local fund. Thankfully due to Sunny's foresight we got a decent place to park the car and thus we moved forward to the falls.

Hogenakkal: The place wasnt so bad, but it was so damn hot that it robbed me of whatever interest I had of the place. It was hot, and crowded to the brim with families skinnydipping in the water at all possible places. We hovered there for sometime, clicked a few photos , and decided enough is enough. It was back to the car enroute to Salem.

Hogenakkal to salem: It was past noon and we were felling the pangs of hunger. Sunny asked a few locals and suddenly we got a short cut to Salem. It was a lesser taken road, between the villages and the hills. The heat and hunger made Sunny go delirious and in one of the hairpin bends we actually skidded on the road like an F1 car. Rarely did the speedometer dip and amidst all the idle banter and leg pulling it was a great ride for all of us.

Salem to Yercaud: It was nearly 4 PM we reached Salem, after Sunny proved to all of us he was no less than Schumi. The next 30 kms had 20 hairpin bends. Somehow driving up a hill station always has a thrill, with the hills on one side and a sheer vertical drop on the other. It is sometimes a treat to stop the car and watch the rain as it falls on the plains. However hunger got the better of us and after a beautiful drive we finally reached Yercaud at 5 PM .

Sightseeing Day 1: After booking into the first hotel we saw, and convincing the manager to give 5 of us a room, it was time for lunch. I do not really remember what we really ate, I just remember i wished i hadnt ordered the soup. Next we were off to pagoda point. Supposed to be the highest point in Yercaud , it was a sunrise/sunset view point. We had no map of the place and while we were contemplating , suddenly Datta found out that the back side of the bill we paid for our lunch had a map of the place. From F1 Sunny shifted to rally mode. The roads in Yercaud are narrow barely enough to allow a car to pass. It was a race against time as the sun was about to set, and after a couple of wrong turns here and there , we did manage to get there while the sun had just set. We did promise that next morning sunrise we would be here.
Post pagoda point, we made a rush for Gents Seat. Another high place on the top of the hills , we could get a view of the entire Salem city from up there. Enroute we passed the Montford school, the very place where Nagesh Kuknoor's film Rockford was shot. Gents Seat was a delight, with a nice chilly breeze blowing the shimmering lights of the entire steel town glittering against a clear sky. The five of us sat down and had pakora with tea while viewing the entire landscape below. The trip was worth it.

Dinner 26th April: We reached the hotel, happy but tired , especially, me and Pinki, after Sunny had made us run while he sped off in the car. Well it was time for some daaru ( I will not go into into the details- Censored stuff.) Post the drinks we became ambitious and decided we would have some continental Khana. What happened next remains a joke for all of us.The items we ordered 1: Vegetable Green Revolution 2: Vegetable Croquet 3: Cheese Sandwich. I was having such stuff for the first time. And the first time it would be.
What we got , made us laugh, more than eat. The green revolution was surely a green revolution on the plate , with rice and green shit and huge pieces of potato on the side. The taste, perfectly bland. The green shit, no idea. And we did not bother to investigate. The Vegetable Croquet was actually a huge cylindrical rod filled with potato and only potato. We christened it "Dudee", post Sunny's comment " Hum aaj dude banenge , menu card main yeh kya hai, hum yeh khayenge" As Sunny gorged on the Dudee, he lamented " Alu khilwa khilwa ke mota karwa denge kya" and then he had one more huge potato from the Green revolution. However I became the joke of the day when the cheese sandwich came. Just 4 slices of bread, no idea whether it had cheese in the middle or not, and some potato chips on the side. Cost Rs.70. Pinki rolled off the sofa, Sunny kept laughing at my face, even Baka did not spare his comments. I was helpless, i didn't know how to react. That cheese sandwich overshadowed everything.

Day 2, 27th April : We wanted to view the sunrise , and for the first time Sunny was the one to wake up the earliest. We hurried to the loo and while we could see the sky turning bright, it was a mad dash to the car and off to pagoda point. We did reach there before sunrise , the first souls , all of us, nearly at 5 AM. It was a nice sight, with the clouds and the mist and Sunny's comments in the background " Dekha , tum log to bas sote rehte ho". After clicking a few and many photos we thought of trying out the rest of the sights. The next target Shevaroy temple. The way unknown. We tried to go there but suddenly at one of the hairpin bends the car got stuck. It was a big scare. While Sunny revved the engine 4 of us guys literally lifted the car from the boulders and set it back on the road. Shevaroy temple was shelved, and we were off to Kiliyur falls . The road was tricky yet again as many times we got down to allow the car to pass through. It was the confluence of 7 hills where we landed at the end. The locals told us the falls were a hike down the hills. Wearing chappals i thought better and sat on the side of the road, near a sheer drop enjoying the view. The rest of the 4 came back, Sunny and Datta firmly on their two legs, Baka crouched, while he was laughing, and Pinki on all fours. I would tell you Sunny's reaction " Bhaakk sala, yeh kya tha. Itna karke neeche gaye , aur kya dekha. ek chota sa boulder aur uske upar just a little tread of water trickling by. " Apparantly the only entertainment they got was Pinki rolling on all fours as he climbed up and down the hill.
There was still some time for breakfast so we thought we would go to the bear caves. It was atop a hilly land and there was no way the car would go all the way. As we took the first step Pinki's bowels gave a red signal. we laughed at him while he trudged along painfully, his face , the classic Pinki pose, gently saying " Abbey wapas chalo yar" . Midway even I got the signal , but I still trudged on. We panted and made our way uphill. Halfway most of us gave up. Sunny was still determined, as he made a dash to the top. Minutes later , he came running back. Bear caves was someones private property ,and he had been stopped by a guard at the gates while trying to enter. Pinki's face suddenly became much better, as he made back to the car in top speed. I followed suit.

Breakfast 27th April: Never knew what we ate, but we ate lavishly. Determined not to repeat the dudee fiasco fro mthe night , we stuck to known bread butter , idly vada and tea. Then we started eating other stuff. 5 people breakfast bill Rs.400. Last nights dinner was Rs.600.

Yercaud to Salem: The drive back was nice, and we were a bit sad on the thought of going back to chennai. However my spirits were high, as we stopped midway to pose for photographs. Suddenly we spied a monkey inside our car, fiddling with Sunny's wallet. We gave a shout and forced it to scamper down the hills along with 2-3 others whom we had not even noticed. We checked the car keys and found it still there. Wonder what would have happened if the monkey had made off with the car keys !

Salem to krishnagiri: A uneventful ride , with the AC in full blast and We were all feeling drowsy Baka was dropped of at Krishnagiri and we sped off. Hunger knocked the bell once again.

Khrishnagiri -Vellore: Pinki got sleepy and started snoring at the back . We stopped Midway for some food . We were out of cash, thankfully i still had some 500 bucks in my wallet.

Vellore - Posting questions to locals we reached the golden temple in Vellore. Sunny said that he had heard it was one made entirely of Gold. It was a really beautiful temple, with a star shaped lay out , 7 gates and an interior palted with gold. As we made our way to the inner sanctum, we found a small pool where people would throw coins for a wish. I opened my wallet and got one for myself . Sunny and Datta asked , so i gave the remaining 2 to them . Pinki was sad as he also wanted one - " Yeh kya mujhe bhi coin do" . Finally the 4 of us together threw 3 coins in the water. One the way back Sunny asked " Pinki tumne kya wish kiya " . Pinki - "Are mujhe wish bhi karna tha kya" . Sunny - " Teri to! you robbed me of my 1/4 wish ... tereko nahi chodunga ". When we reached the car, we saw we had a flat tyre. Next was the fastest tyre change I had seen , and been a part of . It wa 5 mins and we were back on the road. The car cruised on 70 as Sunny remarked it was moving much better now. A dull gloom fell on all of us. Time to hit reality once more as we were nearly back in Chennai.

Marina Beach 27th April 9 PM: We decided to end the trip with a view of the sea. There we were the 4 of us , standing in front of the waves , the roar of the sea a gentle reminder that the trip was nearly over. We lingered on the beach in a hope to prolong this moment a little more, knowing that once we turned our back on the waves it would be a goodbye to a memorable weekend we had ever had.

Are you saying something?

2009-02-06T02:44:00.000-08:00

Huh?

Are you saying something ?

In this post i flex my muscles to proclaim that yes i study science, and the only language i am concerned with is the language in which God wrote this universe -Mathematics.

Uuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmm not quite.

As i could hear the faint sounds of my muscles deflating, i realized,you need to learn the local language too ( as in associated with the geographical location). One year in chennai and i still learnt onyl 2-3 tamil words. Not that i am quite proud of this, but i am not ashamed either. My experience as an actor made me quite competant in chennai using the sign language and theatrics to communicate.
As I came over to Holland i thought I could uphold the practice i had been so diligently pursuing in Chennai. Well considering I have to live here for sometime and most of the time I have to wait for a kind soul to patiently translate the things to me, I thought it might be a better idea to learn the language , to atleast read signs/ symbols if not speak it in the market on saturdays.

SO is this the reason I am learning dutch ?

Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

The real reason is that I am an Indian and I am a Grad Student.................
And my univ gives a FREE dutch course for all foreign grad students.

Why waste when you get something for free ? ? ? So last tuesday I hopped on to my bike and rode to the university at 8 o clock at night to attend my first dutch lessons. And then I remembered how tough it is to learn a language. For starters the instructor always tried to speak in Dutch. Only if hand gestures were not working then she would resort to english. This was a new game for me, trying to understand what she was saying. Once you do get a gist of the meaning then she would repeat it again so that we could have an idea of what individual words do mean.The same sentence repeated some times so that we do get an idea of the words. Now a new sentence is said. Instinctively we try to compare the words with the previous sentence and see if anything is common. Then try to construct a meaning with the common words. Learning a language sometimes seems similar to solving a cryptic puzzle. All you have is some leading clues. Rest you use your intuition and experience to figure it out. The real fun is with the numbers. If you have to say 384 then invairably you get stuck trying to remember the translate for eighty.

Learning a language is good, it atleast stops you from saying "Huh?"

And I wonder how i could learn so many languages when i was young.

N.B. :Dedicated to the people in EFLU Hyderabad.

CAT

2009-01-22T04:26:00.000-08:00

CAT:
If you are not from India, you can imagine little furballs lick their paws.
If you are from India , you know what i mean.
I have hade a love story with CAT.
They say a DOG is mans best friend. CAT is mans best girlfriend.
Why?
Because
CAT is HOT!
She is extremely lucrative
She is extremely hard to get.
Everyone wants her, especially to show off to your other friends.
You have to score very high to even get an interview
You are talking of big bucks in the end of it all.

A considerable aqmount of energy is spent in trying to woo the CAT. The mistake everyone does is that they try to bell her. How would a girl respond if you try to hang a bell around her neck?Still people are inexperienced. They take mock tests , pour over booklets of instructions and rehearse for days in a bid to impress her. Some people have made careers and huge bank balances just by making fake bells.And these fake bells sell like hot cakes.
Since the best girlfriend is always in demand the rejection rate is very high. Only a chosen few get chance to talk to her. However she still weighs your pros and cons, seeks your ulterior motives before granting her consent. Then only you do get a seat in her presence.
Loads of people fail, but scarcely do they get disappointed. After all there is always next year. Also since a girl always prefers working guys, a couple of years of work experience is sought before the next attempt.

Even i tried. I was broke and could not buy fake bells. Still I was fortunate enough to get an audience. However she kicked me out as she suspected of adultery. Come on, how could i make her understand thay i was looking for other girlfriends too, but she was my top priority.Since my previous affair was for 5 yrs she did not consider me to be a suitable candidate. Heartbroken , i spent 1 yr of my life trying to cope over the rejection. I gave her one more try, but this time she did not even grant me an audience. I entered in therapy, and after 6 months I met a new girl and currently i am going out with her. I think i will marry her and make it a life long affair.

You never forget your first love .
But you never forget the hottest chick on the block either !

The European Winter

2009-01-13T03:55:00.000-08:00

"I sift the snow on the mountains below ..."
P.B. Shelley - The Cloud

The first time I actually saw snow I could not help but wonder how aptly the above lines were put. When you look at the snowflakes drifting aimlessly through the air , in a soft gentle motion caressing the ground as it lands softly, you understand what a natural beauty you have missed since childhood while growing up in the tropics.
Snow is so romantic.
That is on the other side of the glass pane. Where you have electric heating and the room is always at 22 C.
When this glass pane vanishes so does the romance. Contrary to all belief snow is wet, it makes the ground slippery and can be quite a headache if you have to cycle 6kms before you can be on the other side of the glass pane again. Snow is also accompanied by a very chilly wind which can literally blow you off your bicycle. It also makes you lose weight and efficieny quite rapidly. You may pedal with much gusto, gruff and pant like a little labrador puppy and remarkably manage to proceed a few centimeters each time.
Side effects of cycling in european winters. Sometimes you really do not know where the tip of your nose is. There have been times when I was unsure as to whether it was still there. The same can be told about your fingertips if your mittens are not quite good. The same for your ego (if you still manage to have one ) when you see the locals cycling away to glory clad in only a jacket, while you have a sweater, jacket, a scarf, mittens ,cap and the hood of the jacket covering you almost everywhere the wind would dare kiss. Sometimes when you stand in traffic crossings waiting for the light to turn green, such cyclist would come and halt beside you, look at you and give a wry smile, deflating the little amount of residual ego you still had.
I have a cycle with 7 gears in the rear and 3 gears up front but being the patriotic guy that i am , i have still clung on to my roots, not moving an inch faster than our dear old Indian bullock cart.
For the first time in my life I have seen the sun come out in the clear blue sky and the temperature fall like an apple on newtons head.
I have seen lakes freeze over and people come out and skate on it as if they were having their noon day walk.
An Indian in an european winter; i am still trying to get used to this cold
And as my boss tells me , wait the cold is yet to start !

The Roman School

2008-11-11T12:06:00.000-08:00

Well if i could, i would have named this post the roman holiday, but since i am here in a school for 12 days attending lectures from 8:30 in the morning to 6 PM in the evening it can hardly be called a vacation. However as the organisers were so kind, i got some free time off last sunday and went to see Rome. My travelouges are usually descriptive and vivid, with loads of passion, but since i am yet to remember the names of the places i had been to I will keep thi spost short and simple.
Rome was not built in a day . Hence you cannot complete sightseeing of rome in one day.
All roads lead to rome. This is true in Italy. They do lead to rome.
And when in rome be the roman. Not entirely true. Every public tourist spot I went to there were so many people from bangladesh speaking in their mother tongue that I was visibly surprised.
When people visit rome, they would tell you about the palaces, the museums, the ruins (forms) the Colloseum. Let me tell you about something else. While we were in the bus early sunday morning having a tour through the old part of the city, there was a place where our bus was caught up in the traffic. Suddenly our guide who was going on droning in a monotonous tone, belting out names of roman emperors, popes, and other digniteries, jumped up and said "Now i am sure that this little lane will interest you" . It was a little lane in old rome, with normal builings on either side. She pointed out to a little yellow building in the left side and said " this was the original laboratory of Enrico Fermi, where he and Majorana worked together".
Apparantly whenever other tourists go by , she would just make a passing remark. Since our bus had a bunch of accelerator scientists mostly from CERN, she was glad that someone would really appreciate the worth of this little yellow building in the streets, amongst all the fountains and castles and marbles and ruin.
As the bus lazed by, en route to the vatican, i saw for myself what was the original "FERMILAB" .

N.B. Some part of the post, especially some names,acronyms are technical/scientific. You might try to contact me or wikipedia incase you need extra information

The end of the road ......

2008-11-07T11:49:00.000-08:00

The world is never a nice place to live in. Because there is always a beginning and there is always an end. Dada retires. Jumbo calls it a day in a matter of days. And two people whom i have loved and respected a lot are no more.
This is not a post to rant about the exploits of Dada and Kumble. Of them a lot has been said, and their respect due for so long has been paid. It just hurts me to think of the fact that only when people are gone do we really remember about them, how great they were, how inspiring they were. Till the time they are there, they are taken for granted.
Dr. Chinmoy Gupta. People do not realize how great he was( atleast those who knew him). For me , I have seen him ever since i have been able to remember things. He was a dadu i had who used to go to the clinic every morning, and when he used to come back from the clinic, he used to bring this pack of little sweet balls of coloured mouri logenze inside. It was something he did without fail, and i used to get my quota of mouri logenze even without asking for it. He was a doctor. Not a famous one in the city he lived ... Howrah. But as family doctors are he was more than a life line for those who used to come to him for medical advice. because he was a doctor but above all because he was FAMILY. Not many people know what this word means, and very few realize the gravity this word carries and even fewer live up to the expectations of this word. Only a handful people i have seen have surpassed even that level. He was one of them. Mamadadu as i called him was my fathers maternal uncle. We went to his house every time we visited Calcutta without fail.And whenever i went there i got my mouri logenze. And he used to tell me that he used to get it from a place called Mourigram. I really believed that there was a place like that. As I grew up , the demand for mouri logenze subsided as did the supply. But i really was surprised to find out one day while returning from Kharagpur to Howrah that there was indeed a place named like that. Mamadadu was always a taciturn man whom people treated with respect. He was also a great listener. Anyone could go to him with medical problems, and he would give a patient hearing to all of them. All he said was HMMMM..... and once you were done, he would tell you the solution. People followed him blindly, listened to him religiously. He was in fallible, never having a wrong diagnosis in his credit. Yes i might be prejudiced, but given my age at that time and my knowledge of the number of people in the family who used to visit him, i have never seen him make a mistake. Whatever he told worked wonders, from my grandmother to my sister's son. For people who have read "the Doctor's Word" by R.K. Narayanan, (read here) he was a similar kind of a doctor.
Till i was young, he was a sort of demigod to me. More than the love it was a kind of worship.
Then i saw his human side. Once i reached college it was one after noon when we had our lunch that he lamented to me one of the greatest regrets in his life. He was there when my grandfather died and inspite of being a doctor he could do nothing, and helplessly watched him. It was as if he was trying to come to terms with that fact and perhaps i was the only one he could communicate that. It took a lot in him to come out with that and my father says that for 40 yrs Mamadadu never said this to him. When i told him i wanted to go for higher studies he was happy too. he wanted one in the family to study. He was an academic person and it disturbed him a lot when people did not pay adequeate respect to academics. And he was one person who remembered this for he asked my father why i went for a job after completing my masters. As i left for my PhD i called him up and told him I would be back after 1 year, and i would come to visit him. He told me he would wait for me.
Not any more.
A lot of unsaid things ran between him and me.
The baton has passed .
The race will continue.........

I wanted to talk about two men. Somehow i am not being able to continue. I will write in my next post.

Holland

2008-09-05T10:25:00.000-07:00

The country is called orange and the people seem more or less nice. In a country which amounts to just nearly half of the state I am from in India, with a population of 17 million ( thats what people tell me), with trains running from the east west end of the country in 4 hours, I find myself after a quarter of a century in my life. At best I will try to describe whatever i could learn from the first 7 days i have been in this country. I plan to be in here for 4 years.
1: Common notion is Dutch people are tall . Not exactly , you have people my size too in here . And that is heartening.
2: The dutch language is very robust. Every word comes like a Boom ! when you hear it.
3: Dutch people are friendly. Even if you meet a stranger while cycling on the road, whom you don't even know, he/she will smile at you and say Hello
4: The country is actually quite beautiful. It is quite green though i am yet to see flowers .
5: Instead of cows grazing in pastures you have horses grazing. Some places i have found sheep too. There are cows too but their size would give Indian cows a complex !!!
6: The land is actually under sea level. However if you look at the endless canals around the place , the water and land seem to be of the same height. This is because the Dutch have actually shut out the sea using dykes.
7: Dtuch shops close at 5 PM every day and the entire day on sundays. Even shop keepers adhere to the timings of indian office goers.
8:The weather is quite dark and gloomy, with a light drizzle all around. On days it is sunny , it is a party for people. They gather around lakes and have a nice time.
9: Dutch people have sturdy legs. They ride bicycles at speeds i cant imagine. I am trying hard to cope up with them.
10. The traffic system is opposite, you drive on the right side of the street. There are separate lanes for bicycles. Unlike India, cars in here stop at junctions allowing cycles to pass first.
11. Apart from the obvious reasons amsterdam and entire holland can be famous for their chocolates also
12: The Dutch really like their football. And they know how to play it
13: Entire European youth love to party. Dutch people are no exception.
14: The centre of a dutch city is always the highest point. This always has a church. This is because when in earlier days the land used to get flooded, the church would always be dry and the people would take refuge there.
15: At night it is mandatory for bicycles to have lights.

More or less this is what i found out
Rest soon to follow

About me

2008-07-03T03:30:00.000-07:00

Inspired my Suvro’s attempt to Narcissism, I try to define myself in my own words.

Its Just About Me:
* My favorite color is red. Blue comes a close second.

* I have very few close friends, but I really envy people who have real close friends.

* I prefer co-operation to competition. But if someone throws me a challenge I will accept it and fight it out to the limit of my sanity. I prefer not to accept defeat.

* I measure time by minutes, and I stick to it.

* I try to be mature. I am a kid at heart.

* I prefer tea to coffee.

* The only virtual game I have played with any hint of proficiency is Counter strike. I still suck at it.

* I have no favorite novelist. Still if I have to list it I would rate Jules Verne and Alexander Dumas

* I think I am a good boyfriend.

* I wait for Friday every week coz Friday night I can really sleep late.

* I have certain principles in life. I try not to change them according to circumstances, and adhere to them

* I sometimes dream big. But it is never even remotely connected to reality

* I want people to appreciate me at anything I do properly.

* I love kids. Somehow I am not good with them. My nephew is the only kid I can manage. He does love me a lot. And I pamper him to my limits.

* I derive much of my strength in life from my books. Every character I have read helps me to survive in any circumstances.

* BTDS and RP Hall are two of the best things to have happened in my life.

* I have really ever loved only two places – Durgapur and Kharagpur.

*I am a big romantic. If I love someone I don’t care about limits.

* I have a very good memory of things which have a rhythm. I remember things according to a beat. If that piece of information has no beat, I cant remember it.

* I'm a very good listener. I can talk a lot also.

* I have an opinion about everything. Only that I never express it.

* I’m very good at 29. My father never taught me bridge.

* I used to smoke and drink. I have quit smoking, just manage to drink little.

* I can flirt with girls but somehow things never turn up that way.

* I'm very bad at interviews and group discussions.

* I have never been so overwhelmed in life till I came across Quarter 1 ELFU.

* I am a big foodie. I love to eat, and can cook my own food

* I can play passable soccer, table tennis and badminton.

* I want to have a library in my house.

* I am a pessimist. Most people don’t know this

* If I am stuck up with a problem, I will be loaded by it till I get to its solution.Till then i stay irked and dejected.

*If I don’t like something, I quit it. If I can’t quit, I stay dejected.

* I like listening to all kinds of music.

* My favorite channel in TV is Changing Channels.

* I believe in the words of John Nash. Every problem in this world has to have a logical solution.And every problem in this world is logical.

* I love Vanilla flavoured ice-creams and Mountain Dew.

*I do not drink milk.

*I hate pretences, I believe in honesty.

* I take things at face value, the first time.

*I prefer to watch and learn rather than do and learn.

* I hate to be wrong. If I make a mistake I make sure I never repeat it.

Fragments

2008-04-11T04:01:00.000-07:00

Read this sentence today
"We are fragments of what we once were "

Made me think.... Yes as we have grown up the ever so neatly craftly world we had set up for ourselves at a very early age, has been torn down in front of us, bit by bit- piece by piece - till it is as of date - fragments . Big or small it does not matter, the biting pain is sue to the lack of wholeness which we find once we look into our lives.
Life was once a conglomeration of dreams. We knew what we wanted. There was no word such as big or small. Every little bit was important. Every dream was a part of the big whole. Through our small stature as we looked up towards life we hoped that as we grew up our dreams would slowly materialize.
Then came the hammer blows. Words which would separate the dreams from reality. " Practicality", "feasability", "compromise".
with each blow a dream vanished, with a strange realization. It was this awkward feeling you had . People said that I was growing up. All these realizations/ emotions are signs of growing up. All more dreams were butchered, I grew up even more. The faster they evaporated, the faster i became an adult.
And now when I have apparantly grown up, with most of my dreams gone, I find myself a fragment of what i once was .....

Till I dream some more

C'est la vie !

Cascade

2008-03-11T05:01:00.000-07:00

In an IT industry, sometimes this rare phenomena hits you called as an "Outage" . It means that all your servers are down ( in case you are as ignorant as i was 5 yrs ago, a server is a big big box having loads of memory, which actually allows you to do all the tinkering you can do in your local system) and while they all are down production ( yess, we do produce something, surprisingly) comes to a standstill.
Whenever such a thing happens, the first thing to be done is to raise a "ticket" ( a call for help for those guys who run the server, saying, Dude, you system is konked out , I cant proceed further)
After you raise the ticket you "relax" . No no , this not some special IT jargon - I just put it in inverted commas as for us developers this word is really special. If we can relax the next word which comes to our mind is "pantry". This is a place where you get tea, coffee, horlicks, tomato soup for free, a cup of Cup Noodles for Rs.10, Packets of chips for Rs.5 ( the rest i do not have ) .
After satisfying your stomach you generally move over to the Carrom or TT table and try to prove there that once you were a really good sportsman, but IT industry ruined you. Had it been your college you would have defeated the balding bum on the other side 21- 0. But since you lost 15-21 you have to relinquish your bat to another guy jobless due to the outage. You go and sit in front of the TV , which has been muted to facilitate the plethora of conversations going around and find two teams one wearing a glaring yellow uniform, another an equally demure green one fighting it out on the cricket field. You look at the scorecard and you bet on your life that you havent heard of these teams before. "Crap" you mutter... and get up and come back to your seat. You tinker around the internet for somemore time, trying to convince yourself that you are doing some constructive reading. Mostly though you skim through profiles in Orkut. Finally you get tired and plead to whoever it is to please let the servers be up and let you do some work.... This boredom is killing you.
Then a mail comes " Servers are up...sorry for the inconvinience" .
You mutter " thank god" .

Then you face the cascade of things runnin behind schedule, one piling over the other , as you realize you have a long night ahead, and will not reach home on time. As you do one thing, another task rears its ugly head, and this cycle seems never ending.

When you actually plead " Please give me a break !!!! "

Look and Feel

2008-02-13T01:13:00.000-08:00

No, this is not the title of a Savage garden song ....
This is perhaps the most commonly used term for people who actually make a living while creating/designing/modifying web pages. What it means is that whenyou or as a matter of fact any user opens a web page how does the appearance look to him/her. Is it user friendly, are there proper visible tabs everywhere, is it easy to navigate in the page ..... etc. etc.
This should make you understand what all I mean by look and feel. I had a very brief brush with look and feel this week, and let me tell you now I care sixpence if the signup button of my gmail page is in Arial font or in Verdana font.
It was monday morning and I was assigned a new task . There are a couple of web pages where there was a "Look and Feel" problem and i was supposed to solve it, so that it was exactly similar to what the page looks in a previous version. Easy as a pie ... just copy paste. Well not exactly . In two hours I knew exactly what look and feel meant for me. It was "Look" at the webpage in front of you and "Feel " this sharp pain inside you which was intermittently crying out WHY !!!!
Okk for starters, I want the contents of the page to have blue border. Whats wrong with the black border anyway ??? Dont know but we need blue. Okk, I search for the code and find out what exactly makes the border blue. Done!!! Okk now to refresh the screen. See, Now i have the blue border. Cool !!!
Wait.... Isnt the text at the bottom right corner in verdana font. It was supposed to be in Arial font! Okk go back to the code settings and find out where the Body style is specified. Okk Done! Time to refresh the page. Shit !!! where is my blue border ???? Now there is no border. And isnt the text colour different!!! What have I done ?
Back to the code and try to redo the thing with some mix and match ! at the end of two hours I find out that its a choice between the devil and the deep sea , ie between the border and the text. Either blue border , improper text or no border . All this for one single page . I mean would it I really care if my orkut home page has a border or not ???? I ask experienced people.... Some more RnD ... We come to know that in the new version of the tool the default labels are changed ( Bottomline - New version - no blue border and arial text together) . What the ......... !
Still move to the next page .... Waah here I get the blue border as there is no text inside . Wait, shouldnt the background be a very light grey. I mean whats the problem if it were white, But since in the requirement it is not white , we have to get grey . Some more code searching ...a lot of soul searching !

The day passed like this. Next day .. Little progress.
Wednesday morning , a mail comes asking all of us to stop working on Look and Feel Issues

Now Look at this Post and tell me how you feel !!!

Chronicles of a IT physicist.

2008-01-29T03:39:00.000-08:00

Okk....
Here goes my blog yet again with some new words ... written , though incoherantly but with sufficiently mental stability.
What I mean to say is that , I am currently in office and inside an IT office there is always hell breaking loose. I mean all you will find is some wooden and glass barriers separating people who are mostly sitting down and staring at a flat screen. If they are carrying a laptop then they are mostly going for a meeting.
An IT office is the most silent place on earth. 70 % of the people are listening to headphones so basically no one talk to one another. In case you need to communicate there is always the intra office communicator which is used to tell impotant as well as unimportant things to people. In case you are searching for a person inside the office then apart from his seat he will mostly be found in front of the coffee vending machine. Thats where people take breaks and talk about money, politics and weather.
So let me tell you what a research guy feels inside an IT office.
The biggest jolts of all: Deadlines- In research there are basically very flexible deadlines. People understand the fact that some problems are beyond your control. In this industry I have found time to be the biggest constraint. You can solve a problem if you have sufficient time. Thats why an IT job is so easy and so difficult. If you have previously encountered that problem then you know exactly what to do. If you have nort seen it before then the possibilty of finding a solution is so vaast that at times you would like to tear your hair apart. In case your hairline has already receded you can try your neighbours. Also, most of the problems are so idiotic that once you know where you went wrong you would like to kick yourself for wasting so much of time to find out that solution. Sometimes you think where at all did your thinking capacity shrink.
Escalations: If there is something you cannot solve/do, make sure someone higher in the official ladder knows about it. If you try to become albert einstein and keep all problems to yourself then at EOD ( End of Day ) there will be a lot of people expecting a lot from you. As long as concerned people know that there is a problem, you are cool. However do not escalate everything, otherwise you will find yourself on the BENCH !
Working hard : Its a lot like showbiz .... if you are on page three , you are doing wonderful work. Your pay packet may not be proportional to your IT acumen.
Knowledge: Knowledge sells in this industry, you need to sacrifice something to gain it. The faster you do , the better for you.
CV: Keep updating it every week... Kya pata Kal ho na ho
Dog tag: For a fresher you feel so proud to have it.... 6 months down the line you are familiar with Canis Familiaris .
The Formal Attire : You need to go out shopping to buy full sleeved shirts and trousers , for everyday work. You are supposed to look good in that. I look dreadful!
the best thing
the pay packet: You find a a substantial increase in your bank account on the 1st of every month which does bring a smile to your face. Then you actually pay the rent, your phone bill and credit card bill and you find that what is left is not enough

Still ... you wake up every morning and come to office ...
Cause everyone else expects you to

Physics

2007-05-10T01:57:00.000-07:00

Half a Decade. It has really been half a decade since I have tried to convince myself that I was studying to become a Physicist. Right now , i am one. All thanks to the Department Of Physics& Meteorology, IIT Kharagpur. Most of us were clueless in our Grand Vivas , where our proffs asked us what exactly had we done in our five years. As my dear friend Santra remarked in the Dept farewell, all of us have done quite well in covering up our own asses depending on the degree of catastrophe we have subjected to ourselves. On my part after I get to know that i have passed through this 5 yrs of ordeal, I sit back and think what exactly have I been learning in these 5 yrs
1. Giving tests without preparation.
2. Sometimes not studying something for the heck of it.
3. Copying assignments and understanding them at the same time.
4. Finishing and understanding 4 months of lectures in 24 hours.
5. A tutorial at night from Dharmu da has better results than those morning classes.
6. Books are the best friends of all .. but knowledgable Dept mates are even better friends than books
7. Eleven people do make a united team, who really stick together.
8. At the end of the day a job really matters.
9.Physics is a difficult subject
10. Yes we did understand Quantum Mechanics, as in we really appreciate Heisenberg for telling the whole world the basic principle on which this entire universe is based. Everything is uncertain, you can only calculate Probabilities and hope it sticks.
11. Gravity is a Myth , The Earth Sucks.
And many more.
On even deeper thinking, (we have really been taught deep thinking), I realised one thing. I can do physics. I just choose not to. Physics requires patience and dedication. But moresoever it requires an atmosphere. That is lacking for me.We are in a frame work with engg students who have a different attitude. Somewhere we turn up confused at some point of time.
Still we are better off than most people I know. As i still maintain, we do understand quantum mechanics, special relativity and GTR.
As i leave kgp here is to all of my dept mates...
to santra ... for really being the adhesive for our batch.
to tunnu ... for reminding us " bahuut magna hai"
to karkare .... for accompanying me in the magna fir makhana category
to saddy .... for those kung fuu labs
to sunny ... for showing that attitude not knowledge defines us
to jits ..... for showing that you can still pursue a lot of things and emerge on top
to coke ..... for showing that screwing up is a part and parcel of life
to bannerziii ... for his constant source of entertainment
to barnu bhai ... for showing the real meaning of time dialation
And to Dharmu da ..... for those countless times his notessaved us and making us proud .

From that evening in PD, to the Q. Mech classes in 6th sem where we all used to attend classes , in the words of SPK " except Dharmesh Jain in all possible combinations of three". From those drunken treats, to those magai sessions in dharmus room before the sems. From disappearing from CMP lab in the afternoon, to actually bunking a Comp phys lab , braving the rain and storm and landing up in LS for a couple of beers, it really has been a journey well spent

To Che, Julian, Maurice, Foosa, and the rest of the Lemurs from madagascar...
Here's to you guys ... Without you PHYSICS has no meaning

JAI BHAWANI !!!

Farewell Netaji......

2007-04-09T16:25:00.000-07:00

Football Part 2 is on the way .. please wait for some more days.

This post is a bit sentimental..... and somehow i could not withold the urge to write this piece.

This is a small farewell to Netaji Auditorium IIT Kharagpur, where last night I went up on stage to put up my final appearance. I never knew throughout my school life that I could be an actor. Drama was something which was distant to me. Coming to IIT however changed the entire flow of events. Drama became my life, and Netaji Audi a shrine in itself. The little amount of belongingness which I have for this place is deeply rooted inside the stage of the audi.
This place gave me my friends my seniors my juniors who have all become family for me. 5 years have passed.
It was the 2nd of Nov 2002 when i started my acting in IIT. 9th April 2007, it all comes to an end.
Some people who have been an integral part of Netaji but have always been forgotton. Berada , Paruida who have tirelessly helped me in every aspect of lights, Abhiramda with his non failing supply of costumes and impeccable make-up. A farewell to them too.

No more .

1st Year 2002-2003:

1. Refund (Open IIT Eng)
2. Arajnoitik (Open IIT Beng)
3: Bidish (Inter Hall Beng)
4: Ei Sohor Ei Somai ( BTDS Annuals)

2nd Year 2003-2004:

5: Rajar Pete Projaar Pithe ( Open IIT Beng)
6: Daho (Inter Hall Beng)
7: Ghasiraam Kotwaal ( Not Staged ; Inter Hall Eng)
8: Tiner Tolowar (BTDS Annuals)

3rd Year 2004-2005:

9: Phaansh (BTDS Freshers)

Netaji Closed for the rest of 2004 due to Dr. Manmohan Singh's visit to kgp

10: Laash (Inter Hall Beng)
11: Ladai ( Inter Hall Hindi)
12: Jhonny and Urvashi (Inter Hall English)
13: Gondi ( BTDS Annuals)

4th Year 2005- 2006 :

14: Bang Bang You are Dead (Open IIT English)
15: Ladai ( Open IIT Hind)
16: Mrityur Ateet ( Inter Hall Beng)
17: Sristhi ka aakri aadmi (Inter Hall Hindi )
18: Bretcht er Khonje ( BTDS Annuals)

5th Year 2006-2007 :

19: Refund ( Open IIT Eng)
20: Tahaar Naamti Ranjana ( Open IIT Beng)
21: Jhonny and Urvashi ( Inter Hall Eng)
22: Kenona Manush ( Inter Hall Beng)
23: Mukto Dhara ( BTDS Annuals)

Not Counting the times we have given lights in Choreo and Music groups events.

Adieu !

Football part 1

2007-04-03T05:48:00.000-07:00

Football …
Something which has become a part of me during my final year of stay in IIT Kgp . I am an out n out Social and cultural man, being involved in dramatics for the last four years of my stay in this campus. The closest I had come to sports was staying next door to Sahan Ray, the G. Sec. Sports of the Institute. So more than my friends, it was a surprise for me when suddenly I was given a jersey for the RP hall footer team. Apparently I had really improved my footer skills, or as my dad put it, people in IIT had forgotten how to play football.
Still. Alls well that ends well , and while the bronze still remains in Brajesh’s room, let me recollect how I managed to get a kick on to the ball inside TSC.

Disclaimer: I still play pathetic football. I just play wearing my own jersey.

The Preparation:

I had just moved into CFW from DTM for my super final yr . There were six of us in here, oldies as we put it, and I planned to spend my last yr in campus quite peacefully. For the last 4 yrs I had been some heavily involved in drams, along with the associated responsibility, I had planned I would try to pursue some other activity just for fun. Having Tunnu in my wing helped coz he was the one to drag me out to the footer field the first day. We started off , a bunch of 5th yrs taking the field. Tunnu, Apro, Kallu, Shailu and yours truly while Kuvulekar dropped by. And we played just for fun. Days rolled by , and the captain showed his face. Loads of second years started pouring in and we started to go early in the mornings during weekends to TSC for practice. I was a dutiful 2nd year, showing up for practice regularly and getting some words of advice ( mostly in heated flowery language) from the captain about my pathetic skills. Six months passed, with the notable events being Tonta injuring his leg and me getting rid of the annoying habit of injuring Souma in forbidden areas ;)
We started playing practice matches, when our dear Vodka got affected by jaundice and unable to find a suitable replacement Captain sir gave me the “responsibility” of playing as a left back. I responded to this decision with some dribbling and some breathtaking blunders on the footer field. One fine day however I was informed I was being shifted from the position of left back to that of a stopper. Apparantly that position requires “ a sense of responsibility” which the captain had already perceived that I had in plenty. I was even allowed to play one practice match in that position. Thankfully that day I stopped all attacks from my side (It’s a different matter all together that Tunnu the saviour most of the time). Such was the atmosphere when we approached the Inter halls.

The Team:

Oceans Eleven …. RP’s Eleven , not to forget all those substitutes .

Goalkeeper : Ani ….. Memorable quotes "shala lui saha , bhan de shaar" . The only reason he has been confined between two posts is because if he runs with the ball or even after it , teammates and opponents have equal probability of getting injured. A safe pair of hands though.

Defense :

Right Back : Manish . Nice soft spoken guy, apparently his exploits actually came into light during the tournament when he made some breathtaking dribbling. Our reserve goalie.

Right Stopper: Tunnu da aka Shantanu . Since class 8 when he had first started playing he has been an integral part of the defense. Since then no one has ever allowed him to go forward. The Baap of sliding tackles. If he gets in the mood he can play “god like “ . And when he is in god mode anything can happen.

Left Stopper: Sushil . Choubey da has the gift of the gab and a nice kick . SF saw him miss practice for some time. Along with drinking he even chose a very wrong moment for trying out grazing. Thankfully he didn’t concede goals. The second reserve goalie.

Left Back: Mangu . Mangu was supposed to play left stopper. However for 2-3 matches he was completely clueless as to what to do as a stopper. As a back he exceeded himself, heaving long throws and getting injured in the face.

Midfield :

Right out : Brajesh . A fast chap with the ball . has a very shy smile. The only person to pay tikka during refreshments. But for gods sake someone please teach him to speak a bit loudly.

Right in : Nikhil. Another soft spoken guy. He and Brajesh have this unspoken competition for talking softly. Smiles even when he is playing . The most versatile player , as in he can romp round the entire midfield and still not get tired or stop smiling.

Left in : Soumo . The captain. Since the beginning of the year he started playing midfield because he wanted to move forward and score goals. A very good player. The only time he was caught offside was when he entered TSC with a female walking beside him.

Left out : Uzi . Give a ball to him and he will ensure that it stays with him no matter how long you try to snatch it away from him. Point is he will move round in circles and even you will . Only person with a good left leg in the team.

Forwards

Left: Pari … The only guy who was in the inter iit team . Now the G Sec. “ Eiiiiiii pariiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii .. you are still my secy “ is his only nightmare.

Right : Arnav . Does not have a left leg shot. That’s why Pari has been cornered to the left. Practiced the punch for an entire year, yet did not use it during the tourney. Took him some considerable effort to actually score a goal. FAMOUS WORDS " MAINE KAR DIYA " . the lingering question ... kya kiya ?? ?

The Substitutes :

Apro : Forward . Those locks keep bouncing while he runs. The modern day Samson A typical “crouching tiger hidden dragon “ stance when he receives the ball. My constant companion on the bench

Makhau : Forward Our impact substitute. Hits goals of international standard. Misses goals of gulley standard. Most impressive comment. After playing for 5 mins makes a sad face and says “ Soumo da .. aar khelte paarbo na “ ( i.e. I cant play anymore)

Siva : Midfield. He has speed . Unfortunately when the ball hits his leg it acquires the same speed so in the end he is left running after it. Has a terrible knack of getting others injured, especially teammates.

Jaggu : Midfeld . Smiles and plays. A good man to psych out others .

Nikhil Prakash : Stunning are those comments he makes on the bench ….. And he has the flashiest of footer boots in the campus !! (Red boots .. you can never miss them.)

Daiya : Back . .. Incredible speed .. went missing after sometime though !

And as Tunnu points out ... even i was there.
More or less this was the composition which went over to the inter halls

The next post … it will recount our journey 5 wins , 1 draw , 1 defeat .

N.B. If anyone wants any changes to the above .. please tell me

The Interview

2007-03-21T00:20:00.000-07:00

Okk ... back to blogging !
Recent events had distracted me for long but we will talk about it later.

First The interview: I faced two interviews this year ( i.e. in 2007) , one for Covansys Pvt Ltd. which unfortunately recruited me . The other one was a biggie , for IIM C.

Let me start with the first one I have forgotten the details , so i will just paint it in the barest of colours ( heehee so much for pictographic speech)

Okk so here is the deal
15th jan sometime near 1:40 PM my dear friend Coke aka Ashoke , informs me that there is a new company in town fondly christened Covansys, and they have kindly allowed destitutes like Integrated MSc people to appear for their written test. His last words ( famous if i might say so ) ;for that afternoon (what else did you think) ; were " Pacha ta ektu sorao baba" (or translated in english " Dude move your pompous ass !!! " ).
So i did get to move my ass , dragged my feet towards the insti and found out that the test for covansys had already started. Still unperturbed i cooked up a conversation with their HR representative ( a not so lovely lady, wearing a lovely skirt :D) and got myself seated in a room full of matkas to give the test. Later in the evening my next door neighbour Lover boy ..... ooopps i mean Sahan Ray gets a call from some one in TnP saying that he has been called for the interview. All fine and sundry , i som how follow him to TnP only to find my name at the top of the last list. The instructions " No formals , report with CV in 5 mins".
Lets just skip the part where i actually got dressed and came back and go to that part where i plunk my pompous ass on a chair in front of a guy who is supposed to screw me.
Sample Question : Why are you leaving physics and joining an IT firm ?
Answer : Sir, believe me , i have appeared for every company that has come before you. Its just that they havent recruited me yet
Q: And why havent they recruited you ?
A: Sir, you yourself pointed out that my CGPA is not impressive. thats why !

guy looks at me halu-ed ...i look back even more halu-ed. dont know, i think he was expecting some fancy answers singing praises of his company. .....
some more general bhaat ... panel tries to prove that i am not a leader like person ... i argue ..

basically interview going in some arbit direction finally the revered ex asked me
Q: So do you have any questions for me ?
A: yes indeed i do , to cut a long story short why do you guys have this general distaste for physics guys ......
The panel takes my question seriously ...
Panel : See from our previous experience we have found physics to be very narrow ...
me: I am sorry sir , but you are wrong; physics is diverse
P: yaah but look ( draws on a rough sheet of paper) ... there are basically two major streams maths and physics. maths has two parts ; logistics and algorithm. We generally deal with these areas , and we have found physics to have no relation with these
me: again , i am sorry sir, but you are mistaken, physics is always related, infact maths is just a language to define physical systems. physics gives a definite meaning to the equations in maths P: so you are very goal oriented. me: Sir, even you are goal oriented.. you can type any code you want but that wont satisfy your needs. you write a definite code for a definite output .. blah blah ... blah blah .
I am excused
1 hour later ... i have a job.
Apparantly my answers somehow impressed them !! duh !!!

Fast Forward ..

2 months later 14th March I arrive in Tata memorial hall in IIM C. I am supposed to have my GD PI in here . I enter with Sahan Ray .... my first interview / GD of this sort and i have no clue as to what will go on. I am directed to a desk upstairs where my documents are verified. My file is returned back to me and i told " go to the lounge and wait" . I find a lot of confident faces. Me grinning , trying to smile ... but a nervous wreck inside. One guy sits beside me and asks " Are you a commerce grad ?" I nod my head vigourously, obviously not! He asks me again " Do you know anything about market ...." I cut him short and tell him my total ignorance related to commerce. He ventures off to greener pastures, I shower him with the choicest of expletives .... saale mujhe hi mila psych karne ko !!!!!
A lady enters and announces 7 names ... their panel is waiting. There are 7 of us left. We eagerly wait for our panel , while pleasant words are exchanged. Apparantly they all seem to know each other having met each other over the last IIM interviews. I am fresh meat! We all concur that it was nice that there was no female member in the gd group. Some even pointed the pros and cons of female candi's in a gd recounting recent experiences. Time comes. A gentleman enters and announces our names. Our time has come
We walk into a nice air conditioned room with a row of chairs arranged in a semi circle. i take my place and so do the others. A panel of 3 people look expectantly at us. The GD is about to commence. First a lot of rules are said. We are given a piece of paper with a case to be studied. I won't discuss the case ... after all it was all confidential considering that they took back the piece of paper after it was over , as well as any rough paper we might have scribbled upon. Well as soon as i finished reading it, the professor in the panel said " okk now you may start" ... and boom !!! Sahan Ray starts speaking. Me ... i am at a complete loss of words. Suddenly the guy next to me rudely interjects and starts speaking. give him 30 secs some one else interrupts. Now there 2 people talking simultaneously.... suddenly it becomes 3. then one stops . the other one too. another rude interjection. For 5 mins I have no choice but to look from one face to the other, What the fuking hell is going on. Suddenly its do or die. I open my mouth and say something. Thankfully I get through two clear long sentences and possible one drawn conclusion before i am stopped short. Another volley of 6 voices , with my left hand neighbour being a very aggressive person ( wanted to really shut him up !!! ) . Somehow before the end I manage another 2 sentences. The Panel proclaims .. "time is up !! " . We all summarize the discussion .

phew !!! GD is over , though i have no clue as to how i performed !!!
I go downstairs and wait for the interview, i am the 2nd guy in line. Some anxious moments , and as soon as the 1st guy comes out i am showed in . Did i wish Good morning ??? I dont remember. I took my seat. My file with all my certis is couteously taken away from me. One person remarks " You have a very nice file , where did you buy it ? "
Me " Sir I got it at a Symposium in Kgp ."
Panel : Aha so you are in physics , so you are a good student. Tell me why do you want to leave physics "
Me: Sir i cant study for 5 yrs more for a PhD .
P: But the country needs Physics teachers , what about that ?
Me: Sir , I do not think I will be able to teach .
P: How can you tell, you might be a very good teacher .

I mumble something out .. panel remains nonchalant

P: Okk but suppose after this MBA you go off to do a PhD , that means 7 yrs more . Dont you thinks you are wasting Rs. 10 Lakh Indian Government is spending on you ?
I reply with some crap on value added and all that in IIT education.

Panel moves on.. technical questions next. They had asked me 3 questions related to physics. I omit my replies in this post coz .... I do not know what was supposed to be the answer.
Q1 : They say "the chemistry of love/relationships " and "the physics of the market " As a physics student explain what it means to you ??
Q 2: Explain what Newtons 3 laws mean to you ??
Q3: When we open a tap the water flow is streamline, but as you open it wider, the flow becomes turbulent. Why ?

[I give you some time to find answers to these questions]

Next ... career goals
Panel : You say you want to open a broadcasting company . Do you think Media sensationalizes news?
Me : Yes sir for some it does , for some it doesnt.
Some more crap from my side ... a volley on the media
Panel : So have you made a B plan for this ?
Me: No sir
Panel : So , is it just a dream ?
Me : Yes sir .
I am excused !
I move out of the room having no clue as to how my interview went ! Results are due till mid week of april ... so still i have no clue.

End result : Please ... no more interviews for me !

P.S. : I missed a TIFR interview . GOD knows How i would have fared in that !

Dawn

2006-12-31T13:26:00.000-08:00

It is a new year for all of us, and perhaps a good one for all of you out there .. for me , maybe not so much .
So lets get back to blogging, after all these days I was pitifully trying to convince myself that I was busy , and finally I do have a break from all that.

"If God does not love you, how can you explain all the things that you have done "

Are we lucky ? What do we mean by luck? Chance ? Fate ? Predetermined Stuff ? Or Some statistical phenomena ?
The word crossroads has such a deep meaning for life. At a crossroad ideally you have one road behind you, a road which you have traversed for all this time , a road which you know decently enough, and in front of you, there are three more roads. You can take any one .. any one which suits you at that moment. Once you set upon a road you can never know what would have happened if you took the other road . Such is a dilema you face. Can it be resolved ? Which one is the right path for you? How do you know the path you have chosen is best suited for you ? Luck ? Chance ? Fate ?

The Darkest hour of the night
To stand and scour for a sign in sight
there is a path with your footprints behind
In front , three more are there to find
Look at the side- there's a wooden board
On which engraved is the word "Crossroad".
What strikes first inside your mind is
How the hell are you to find
the one path meant for you.
try your luck?
take a chance?
or wait for someone to pass by?

I cant say , my life is prose
rough- serrated- drab- morose.
the path on which I trude upon
the one which shows the light of dawn.

The Actor

2006-09-24T19:36:00.000-07:00

Sometime ago I thought of making a database of all the plays I had done and the nitty gritty's associated with each production . Lets hope I can complete it in 3 posts .

1st year :

# 1 : This might be a sort of a prelude to whatever is supposed to come, but i believe this part of the story is important for explaining the rest of the things which are about to come. It is my 2nd evening in a place called IIT Kharagpur. I am relaxing in Dipayan Banerjee's room( fortunately he had a single room from the beginning, so it was a safe refuge for us to maaro bhaat). Two imposing figures suddenly appeared at the door, with the following retort "Are you bengali ? " Damm hell we were, could you hear the banter going on full volume in our mother tongue ? Well we were supposed to report to a place called the gymkhana for auditions for the bengali dramatics society. Suddenly I made myself scarce as i remembered all of a sudden the necessity to take a bath. One month later following the invitations of a couple of friends , i went to watch my first play in IIT . It wasnt so bad , and perhaps I felt it was really my cup of tea.

#2 : Pre Midsem in my first year, I was making a customary trip back to my room after an evening spent in Rakesh's room (our customary cyber cafe for the 1st sem) , when I stopped to have a peek inside JCB mess . Rehearsels were on for Open IIT English Drams by Anirban Ghosh (since then christened "Load"). I stepped in and stayed there for one evening. Came back the next , and the process continued till we staged the play in Netaji. Still, I didn't get up on stage to act.

#3 : Post Midsem , very near Diwali, after an afternoon of Volley, I had a bath and was contemplating on finally studying, when a knock on my door forced me to open it. Out of the blue Mr. Atin Bannerjee stares at my face. His only remark is " Oh ! It's you. Grab some trousers and come with me. " I am taken to a "Senior Hall" for the first time and it was some where inside Nehru Hall C Block where I got to meet Somesh Prasad Roy and Subhadeep Roy. Suddenly a script was thrust into my hand, some brief reading of the role assigned followed (Later i found out it was my audition, However the heads at that time were so desperate to find a cast for their 5th play , even if I said it badly I would have been taken.) After some time Sudip Sarkar (who had by that time some how slipped in the room ) said that I would be doing the role of Jibon Mistry. It was friday. Play was scheduled on tuesday. Rehearsels would commence immediately and i was to report to the Old building Foyer at 9 pm that night. That was my introduction to BTDS, a name which become a major part of my own identity in the years to come.
{ Later I found out yet again , I had been sold by Load Ghosh. The Open IIT is a competition which gains validity only if there are 5 participating teams. Till thursday night there were only 4 teams . Hence it was extremely vital that a 5th play be staged. Most of the experienced people at that time were involved in a play called Vikramaditya , which had a cast of 20 odd people. For the 5th play Somesh da had asked Load to play a part. Load shirked off this responsibility by striking out a deal saying that he would be excused if he provided 2 more people for the 5th play. The wily fellow ensured his absence by introducing me and Arnab to the society }

At night 9 pm old building was completely different from what it looked like in the morning. It was sort of eerie , combined with the lack of people , some shady lighting and a history of matyrs who had become shaheed on that very spot. There I first met the rest of the group. I got to watch the rehearsals of Vikramaditya and found out that these people were a lot more professional and it would be quite different from the school plays I acted in. The degree of seriousness was measured from the fact that the writer of the play had been called for the rehearsals , so that all of the cast could understand the play !
So after some serious acting, I was a bit nervous about having to rehearse then and there. Still i could say I scraped through the script reading on thursday and friday. Saturday afternoon I have my first rehearsal. I still do not know how it was .... comments were strictly refrained. Sunday less rehearsals, just some words of wisdom from Tirtho da , people concentrating totally on Vikramaditya. The first run through of the play.
Next day is the stage production of Vikramaditya. I stay dazed after the performance. Still one of the best I have seen till date. The gang is more than happy . Elated faces supervise our 2nd run through . The first run through for Sudeep , Pinki , Atin da and Sujoy da , and for me and Arnab, the second one.
D Day 5 pm just in front of Sup-Dup, we have our final run through!!! 8 pm we have our production.... I don some heavy makeup with a flowing beard and moustache. Particulars of the play : I give a monologue for 5 mins in which Arnab has to freeze, so basically while I am making up a story of my own and increasing the length to near 10 mins Arnab has to literally stand on one leg !
Some time later the results come out.. with only 3 run throughs our play comes 3rd, and I am capped as the best actor. Till now I havent been able to remember what happened next. All of a sudden I am swept off my feet Literally carried out in front of Netaji to recieve my first dose of something called "GPL " ... People from all around Netaji landed in a jiffy to smack my arse with incredible force, Sujoy da in particlar taking a long Run-up before landing his boot on my bottom.
Welcome to Acting !!! No 1 in the bag .

# 4 : Just after Winter break , time for Inter Hall. This time Load all out blazing guns . We are stormed by his methodical approach to Drama. This guy counts the number of steps you take in a single monolouge so that you can use atleast 5 of the sets in one go. We have loads of problems during rehearsals including me being one irresponsible fellow vanishing to my brother's marriage on the day of the lights rehearsal ! If I were to go into the intricate details it would be long and boring. So to cut the chase Let me recall the hero of the day . Amitava Bhattacharyya ! The man who would become the headlight of BTDS in the future. The scene was to show the death of one of the characters being crushed to death under the wheels of a lorry. Amitava laid a beautiful plan , and the scene was so graphic that at the end of the play the judges praised this one lights effect beyond par. We didnt win anything that day but the true hero remained Amitava.

# 5. : Annuals 2003. Perhaps the fondest of all memories i have related to my IIT stay . I do not remember how I got roped in to the entire process, but before I knew it the nights would be spent at the insti foyer, my second home for the years to come. With a gigantic cast and some multitalented seniors all round it was quite a nice change to actually sit down , sing some songs , dance and enjoy all the fun. At first even I had to sing a song up on stage but thanks to Sudip da I was demoted to the ranks of a standby. Thank god .. it really was a tough song , and the play "Ei sohor Ei somai " was the toughest play I had ever been a part of. But incidentally I do not remember the hard work which was put into it . It was all fun ad frolic for most of us in our 1st year.
Some incidents which do remain priceless
# Amitava sleeping on stage during the rehearsels when everyone around him got up danced to a song for approx 5 mins and then sat down again .
# The chewing gum episodes , when during practise sessions we used to have chewing gum in our mouths courtsey Sujoyda
# Hooting Debjoy da on stage , who incidentally was one of the best singers in IIT at that time. I even got to whistle on stage !
# And the grand la grande treat given by the profs after the production. Basically then even we did not know who was giving the treat, we just went there and ate :P

One year down ..... four more to go
Will update soon ..

Belief

2006-09-19T18:36:00.000-07:00

I Believe ......

that
Life is a continous exercise of saving one's own ass

that
Time is still undefined, so we arent sure of what we are wasting

that
Lust is the primary driving force in Human Instinct

that
Sex is something I encounter only in Bio Data forms

that
Good Food should get you high

that
Paper is sacred, you shouldn't wipe your shit with it

that
the invention of the light bulb misled us all; we confused night n day

that
Music should be able to change your mood

that
the earth is not a perfect sphere

that
Richard P Feynman was a genius

and that
GOD is asleep, i only try to wake him up before my exams.

I was Temporarily Insane ... i decided to make it permanent.

Staged !!!

2006-09-16T11:38:00.000-07:00

To think of it this post comes a bit of late , as I was busy in updating my other blog (link given below)
Last week I had my 20th play in IIT. The stage has become a familiar place for me now, perhaps even more than the classroom I sit in. Getting involved in dramatics made my life well phased out. It would be atleast 2 society productions every year, 3 open IITs 3 Inter halls, rehearsals which lasted late night to early mornings either in the institute foyer or in the RP common room. Sometimes I wonder what my entire stay in IIT would have been without the stage at Netaji Auditorium.
The first time I jumped up on stage it was with a group of revered seniors, a new stage , a new make up room. I had tufts of some synthetic strands glued up to my face. It was supposed to be a beard. The glue applied so lavishly to my face made matters even worse. Rather than concentrating on the dialogues I was trying to avoid to ingest those loose fibre strands, that hung loosely over my lips.
Last week it was a new stage, a new make up room, and a bunch of fresh kids .
Still the feeling was of the same effervescent nervousness which I felt while treading on Netaji for the first time, the same tremors of "what's if something goes wrong? ", the same enthusiasm to give in my best in this performance.
Some things never change
Last year after the annuals , I had made up my mind to quit acting. Somehow when Open IIT English came close this year, the stage kept calling to me. For the last year I was so busy in directing the plays that I had to curtail my first love - acting. This year suddenly I chanced upon the script which we rookies had put up in our first year. As nostalgia flooded in, I resolved to do this play once more in an effort to win a prize that it ever so deserved.
The calls were becoming stronger.
Late night rehearsals started in RP common room, and I found out a bunch of kids who obeyed every word I said .
The call was responded
7 people up on stage; Name of the play - "Refund".
This is what the stage can do to people like me . We forget all the resolutions we make, the promises made to our parents , just to get a sniff of that feeling of creating something new, a feeling which has addicted me to the core of my existence.
And still I am waiting for my next play

Next time perhaps when my thoughts aren't so incoherent , I will write about acting.

Quote .....unQuote

2006-08-23T15:00:00.000-07:00

My friends complain that i keep Killer status messages in my yahoo messenger !!!
No doubt they are a height of my creativity !!!

so here is a compilation of all such

1: I was temporarily insane, i decided to make it permanent.
2: If physics is like sex then i am a virgin.
3: I am a screwdriver , i spend the entire time screwing up my life , and then unscrewing it.
4: Modesty is not my forte , I suck

A whole load of quotes has been uploaded in our other blog http://quoteofarms.blogspot.com In case you have objections in reading objectionable stuff, please refrain

Medicine man

2006-07-21T22:59:00.000-07:00

Studying in IIT, you always start off with an air of invincibleness, a feeling that you know everything, a feeling which reduces rapidly with time, faster than a negative exponential function. After 8 months in here you are so pleased to find so many things that you do not know, and more so things which you have no intention of knowing.
Amongst all this, the world of medicine which intrigues me the most. We get sick and then we are helpless, most of us having no idea what exactly is going on. However as they say (please do not ask me about the "they" ) experience is a wonderful teacher. So after 3 yrs in a hostel I have found so many professional quacks walking around, including yours truly.
After all the world of medicine is not so complicated. Go to a druggists shop and then you will understand that. You will find people rattling off the names of medicines, their effects, side effects and dose , mode of usage as if it were the latest world cup match results. Curiously none of them hold an MBBS degree. Come on , to think of it its all so simple.....
if you have fever - pop in a calpol
shitting more than usual - metranidazole
shitting too much with pain in stomach - Norflox TZ
indigestion - diegene/ gelusil
other forms of pain - dispirin
more pain - buscopan
flowing nose - cetzine
throat congestion - ampicillin/ dox .... And a whole lot
cough - cough syrup (here the chemist can help you)

See its all so simple. Some of the above quack therapy and you are fit to work the next morning. Off Course there comes a lot of times when all of the above fail miserably then you have to go and meet a guy not only with a MBBS degree , but with a host of other appendages as well. Sometimes I envy these medicine men, they can add so many things at the back of their name , which amplifies the enormous respect they already command. The last time I went to see a doctor he was something like "Dr. So and so ; MBBS(Cal), MD(Cal) FRCS(Edin), MRCP (Lond)........... " (Pardon me if these short forms are inaccurate, I have no idea what they mean ).
I had gone to him complaining of stomach pains , which could not be cured by my quack therapy.
He had a good look at my stomach , pressed it in a hell lot of places and asked whether that region was paining or not. Concluding his diagnosis he remarked " appendicitis, move into surgery " !!!!
Ahem .. No way !!! No surgery for me , I am scared at the sight of needles and scalpel. So move to a man of medicine , who pokes in some more and gives me some pills to pop down every morning and afternoon after meals. He suggests ultrasonography for a conclusive diagnosis.
Move over to a third medicine man , and this time he uses a short stick to poke me , and poke me hard from every possible angle in the right side lower abdomen. He even pokes me on the left side to determine whether I was feeling different kinds of pain on the different sides.
Hell with all the poking I had in 1 week , even if I did not have stomach pains I would certainly have it now.
USG report : no signs of appendicitis , marginal hepatomegaly.
Now what do you make of that ? It took another medicine man to explain the report and impose a lot of restrictions on my diet.
1 day of pain; 7 days of helter skelter between clinics , nursing homes and labs . End result , I am on a diet for the next 4 months.
No wonder the world of medicine is a mystery.

When I was young I had dreamt of becoming a doctor. Now I am a self confessed, clueless quack. I wonder, had I chased my dreams what kind of a medicine man would I have turned out to be .

The Other side

2006-05-10T07:40:00.000-07:00

To think that this will be the last of the series of posts i am making for this academic year does certainly give its jolts. From next semester I would be more regular in penning down my thoughts given that there will be no one left to share with.

Its nothing but a mask

this countenance put up for public display
a grim determination in the mind does play
show a tough exterior for all to see
while deep inside the real me
stays hidden from all i meet
a mask it is which all greet
this mask - amassed with falsity
has now become my identity.

But why there is a mask

The need to hide the inner self
lest vexed ,the thoughts hid in a shelf
the face to don with others to please
their words to concur, their thoughts to appease
to make an impression in a group
to prove i am a part of the troupe
afraid of loneliness deep inside
the mask searches company far n wide .

Beneath this mask
I am what i am
maybe a farce maybe a sham
maybe a trifle not worth a dime
a wrong man in a very wrong time
a cynic unchained , an unsound mind
a pathetic loser or one of its kind
a confounded idiot on the whole
i am jinxed , bless my soul.

Sometimes ;an actor's face contorted numerous times by he dons the makeup; makes him forget who he really is .... I have found out that late at night when no one is around , the original face does resurface ......
In search of the real face .

Insane

2006-04-29T23:39:00.000-07:00

It was a long night,
Staring blankly in the darkness ruffled up in thoughts.
obscure thoughts in my head , things i have lost .
things i have yet to lose,
things i can never lose ,
things i wish to lose ,
things which are of no use.

Looking back ,
In my path i find emptiness profound.
those times i have plummeted straight to the ground
times i have tried to rise again ,
times those trials failed again,
times i still tried to rise - again ,
times- i have lost count of them.

Looking ahead ,
It takes considerable strain to view whats in store.
Given the pattern for the last years i bore .
guess i will try once more,
guess i will fail once more,
guess finally nothing 'll remain,
guess in the end i turn insane.

All quiet on the western front

2006-04-22T00:18:00.000-07:00

This post was long overdue, but some how i resisted the tempatation on the pretext of sounding overtly sentimental. As this academic year draws to a close, i have to close the chapter of another job i was entrusted by my peers and seniors , and perhaps look back in satisfaction at a job well done. A successful Freshers , the burden of a workshop and then the annuals.Looking back at the score of events, I believe the society has lived upto its best potential this year. Leaving all the rest it has been the Annuals which has left me in a state of daze, a sense of numbness from which i think, i am yet to recover. A lot of history is associated and perhaps penning down all of those thoughts in here could leave my readers confused. So lets get back to the main crux.
22nd April , morning 8 o clock , enroute to the mess for my breakfast just before an endsem paper, i find one of the walls a fresh issue of Schols avenue. My eye falls on a familiar photograph , as i quote
"No officially printed script.
22 days of practice
No single Director
a panorama spanning over 5 plays
17 handpicked songs sung by none other than the members
12.5 feet by 17.5 feet backdrop
29 members on cast out of which 7 were final years
A total of 53 members on the production"

When we had decided on " Brecht er khoje " for this annuals , i had never thought it would be such a huge affair. It was all Shaurya's idea , because even after the initial boost, we felt for this play none of us felt equipped enough to harness a production of this magnitude. Even Load Ghosh was left thinking twice as we sheepishly concluded that this was way beyond our league and we should look for other alternatives. But it all boiled down to one statement shaurya made " Nangto da there are no issues .. we will do it "
that was it ... one phone call to load and everything was decided, it would be a tribute to Brecht for our final show of the year.
The next 22 days left me with a variety of emotions at the end of each day especially those last 5 days in which the 6 of us maaroed continous night outs.
At the end of the production a strange feeling crept inside me . Everytime I had stepped up on stage i had this desire to out do myself , out perform myself with every performance. This time however it was different . Captain Nemo's words at the end of the Nautilus's journey came into my mind " Almighty God Enough ! Enough ! . " This was the best performance i had witnessed . Those smiles so evidently beaming on the faces of the cast was proof enough. Strangely i had no desire to outdo this performance. Let it remain the best , the best of everything that i have ever been a part of. Perhaps i can never step up on stage with the same zeal and motivation that i had done on so many earlier times .
So while the baton is passed to others and they scale the new heights which they ever so deserve , i think is prudent for me to just fade away to the wings ; whilst the others grab the centerstage ; basking under the glory of something that was so special to me .
For those of you who were with me , who made it possible, who contributed in every single way , a thank you would perhaps demean our efforts. I only wish you all had felt the same euphoria which i felt.

Miss you

2006-03-03T08:41:00.000-08:00

I still remember the address by heart. 174 A Bankim Chandra Avenue, B-Zone, Durgapur 713205. Being born there my earliest childhood memories start from that small apartment in the 2nd floor of the very first building overlooking the then ever-so-busy Tansen More of B-Zone in Durgapur. For when I was born the Steel city was infact bursting in its prime. And that house perhaps defined a lot of the things which have been associated with me today. The verandah at the front which perhaps was our only link to the vast world outside. The only problem in the panoramic view was a giant blackberry tree which was strategically placed right in my line of sight and blocked everything that a kid of 5 yrs would like to see. Maybe thats the reason why i first went over to Jaba jethuma's place, her verandah had the perfect view. But thats just an assumption this "logical" brain of mine places on the counter. Reality : the only thing i remember is that whenever the front door would be open , that woulod be my cue , a dashing sprint and off i would be in Jaba jethuma's house, where i would be safe from those ensuing beatings which were so-deserved after all the mischief i had done. My ma would be standing out near the door waiting for me to come out but Jaba jethuma's place was one where i had plenty of things to do; wait peevishly near the thakur ghor until jethu finished his daily pujo and handed me over my share of 2 Nokuldana's; talk endlessly with bablidi , who till date has found my conversations ever so amusing; hammering away on the drumset Deb-da had kept in the corner; or even trying to find out where Kaju da had kept my quota of chewing gum for the day, those little white NP gums which used to come in a pack for four, and everyday i would be ever so content in chewing. But the best time i passed was with jethuma , we used to sing, dance , have lots and lots of things to speak about, my school , my friends and my teachers. Ma says whenever i used to cry Jaba jethuma would hear it swop me over and take me to her place and it would be atleast 2 to 3 hours before ma got to see me again. She told Ma i was like her son, and she would have me sit no place else other than her lap. It was on her lap where i watched "Maine Pyar Kiya" for the first time (needless to say i understood nothing, i was 7 at that time), hid my face under her anchol when Rambo would be beaten up by some other goons, and chatter away endlessly while Street hawk would speed away at 365 miles/hr. Those endless hours she spent with me while i lay semi-conscious ridden with typhoid in durgapur hospital , is perhaps my most cherished memory.
We shifted when i was 9 years old, moved some 1 km away from Tansen more. There I grew up in a different enviornment, new people without Jaba jethuma. I guess the separation hit me hard, it took me quite some time to get adjusted. But Class 3 in St.Xavier's gave me very little time to think of all this. I grew up and the visits to Jaba jethuma's house dried up, going ther every one month or so only for a span of 2 hours in the evening. Then come Class 6 and i learnt to ride a cycle. It took my dad some coaxing to let me out on the main road but when i first got the chance i flew away to her house, excited to finally go over there on my own .Then friends , football and cricket caught my fancy during the evening and these visits also dried up. She started telling me over the phone " Buro doesn't remember me anymore" .
Class 9 and we shifted once more and this time it was a distance of 12 kms that separated us. With my busy academic schedule and all those tuitions my social life came to an absolute standstill. She kept telling Ma to send me over , but even though my heart wanted to i could not go . Post boards came my college life where holidays dried up faster leaving me just one major break in the summer. And that was the last time i visited her. Two years back when i paid a surprise visit , her face glowered with anger and happiness. She complained at how i never visited her anymore saying " Buro tui to aamai bhulei gechis" , yet she was so happy that i had come over to her. And in front of her 3 grandchildren she made me sit on her lap the entire time , while those kids got so amazed that a big fellow would get more preference over the lap that was so rightfully theirs. Before leaving i made a promise , i would visit her again.
i failed .
yesterday when i went over to Kolkata Ma told me Jaba jethuma died last month due to a massive heart attack.
I miss you, and i can never forget you .

N.B. For Souvik Das and others , i have allowed anonymous comments in my blog

Vini vidi ........

2006-02-27T10:05:00.000-08:00

It has been a month since i last posted .... (The whole of february i think ). Meanwhile people around me having been belting stunners in their blogs........ for eg : Coke has recounted his enitre story with some occasional poetry !!!!
So past one month on a day i am bedridden with some unknown ailment affecting my intestines i have the time to update my blog.
The topic for today : Cockroaches ....
Since i do remember ... this evil malicious beast (insect) which was (and is ) scary , black and had this huge eye like thing on the top of its head ..... which had the uncanny habit of lurking behind dark corners and suddenly jumping out to scare you like hell. No it didn't bite , but worse it seemed to have this feeling inside as of a beast whom you couldn't control. From the days of Baygon to Hit , to Laxman Rekha, i have seen a numerous antidotes applied to irradicate this menace but still the the population just refuses to say quits. I remember my dad telling me one day that roaches were supposed to be one of those primitive animals which have survived for so long and would infact survive any nuclear holocaust where the entire human population would surely be wiped out . So tell me, wasn't it common sense to get frightened of such a beast !!!
Strategic points : Roaches didn't bite as mentioned earlier but something is malicious about it's saliva, some points about it causing a skin disease! But i seriously doubt people being victimized by roach saliva. So why are people afraid of roaches (Sorry this isn't what i am thinking now but i used to think years ago).
The conclusion which hit me : Roaches are worse than ghosts , they scare you out of your wits when you least expect them to ... they have the audacity to do so in broad tubelight .... they hover around the kitchen at the time when you feel like having a post dinner snack and worse ; the scariest part .....they can fly and they take the aeriel route without any prior warning. It makes a man feel so vulnerable when the roach is just next to him one moment and in the next , its dangerously hovering round your had perhaps contemplating whether to sit on your head or on your shoulder. And the thought of having a roach on your skin eeeekkkk !!! gives you the creeps ... after all its stinky, dirty, hover round sewage pipes and other places where the human nose has asphixiation.
But i am a human being , i wouldn't be bullied by a cockroach. SO i found out my answer to the menace ..The Bata hawai chappal ... easily accessible, firm yet flexible, has a larger surface area but easily fits in the palm of your hand .But the most important point that hard sound it made once you got your kill really gave you an immense satisfaction..One down several more to go !
As time progressed i got better with my weapon , making it take the aeriel route when a roach would take the same . And with each kill amazingly my fear subsided till the time came when i finally began to feel confident with a chappal in hand while facing a cockroach.
And when just yesterday my next door neighbour was standing timidly outside his room, complaining that there was a cockroach inside , a confident me opened the door and started searching for the puny insect .
Deep down i was having this feeling inside me .. I came I saw ............. I conquered .

N.B. The identity of my next door neighbour is reserved for those who respond to this blog .....:D

Reasons

2006-01-31T08:46:00.000-08:00

Lets start off by this little excert .... source unknown for the time being , though i know many of you will be able to pinpoint the donor once you have been through it

"I am everything you want
I am everything you need
I am everything inside of you
That you wish you could be
I say all the right things
At exactly the right time
But I mean nothing to you
and I don't know why "

The idea is, we always expect things to happen for a reason. Indeed , knowing or unknowingly we look about for reasons for everything happening to us. But unfortunately sometimes something goes terribly wrong, and you cannot get through to the most logical cause for why it went wrong. Then what do you do ? What is your reponse to such a situations?
An open forum to all ... ideas, personal experiences.... anything .
For me , i tried to analyze such a situation cause more often than not something always goes wrong for me without a reason. Now instinctively thats a kind of thing i cannot accept, and immediatly i go off for a damage control analysis .. more or less like hunting down any possible reason. If i do not get one readily, more often than not i keep myself satisfied with a reason i make to suit my own purposes.
a scapegoat i am not, but my point is does everything has to be causal ?

Reference : "Everything you want " by Vertical horizon ...... a very good song to listen to after a couple of mugs !!!

History

2006-01-23T03:13:00.000-08:00

Aha !!! my first personal post ... on matters which are supposed to be personal. Now it feels good to have a blog, where you can easily vent out the emotions of your private life. And what more could be a better topic , than Spring Fest itself.... The annual cultural fest in IIT kgp which has such a hype and hulla inside the campus, which fizzes out so fast and effectively once the fest actually commences. But one mans meat is another mans poison. So while some of us really get pissed some lucky individuals do have a gala time.
But lets focus our sights back to the title. History. SF 2003 day 2 morning ... saunak basu comes up to me and says " oye .. some female is searching for you" 3 hours later catch a familiar face with osama !!! 24 hours pass in a blur!!! After-effect - I miss wildfire .
Fast forward 2006 . SF day 1.6 PM ... i go and pick up same female from kgp station. A night out at cheddis, 7 hours leaves mohan frust early in the morning. 8:00 AM shes gone. After-effect ... i miss shakar mahadevan (no regrets for that!! had heard him in REC DGP 4 yrs ago ).
History repeats itself ..... or do we self-consciously make it repeat ??

Name....

2006-01-14T04:33:00.000-08:00

Whats in a name ??? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet! Well if there's no such big deal about names then it wouldn't have really mattered if i were Albert Einstein... then i would have been famous .. also i would have been history.
But a name has its own pros and cons. Being blessed by a very big name, it has always been some sort of amusement for my classmates at the time of an attendence roll call. Teachers/ instructors starting from schools to institutes have been left gasping for breath wheneverthey try to read my name aloud. Most of them get lost somewhere in between. If somehow a few manage to successfully read it .. well the pronunciation goes horribly awry.
Leave teachers aside , i have so much difficulty when i get introduced to strangers ( and i mean not necessarily females of a certain age group). Every one asks me once " your name is what ??"
I have even done a google search on my name.. the results showed only only 13 hits. It seems there is no other person in this planet with the same name as mine. And that should make me feel happy i suppose ......
But surprisingly it is not. I mean it is quite disturbing when you introduce yourself you have to cross-check if the other person got your name properly, when any legal document, awards certificates you receive you first see whether they have spelled your name properly or not. Numerous certificates had to be changed just for this spell error.
So when my sister asked me to suggest a name for my nephew ..... i could only ask her to give a common name, easy to spell and pronounce.
Better to have a common name than an uncommon one !

Cruel Intentions

2006-01-10T16:08:00.000-08:00

Now i know that the headline is quite misleading, and probably you will concur with this once you have been through with the entire blog. The flick Cruel Intentions released in 1999 with Sarah Michelle Gellar , Ryan Phillipe, and Reese Witherspoon is not the topic of discussion here. Nor is the recent hindi movie Bluffmaster a centerstage figure. However there is one common thing between the two movies. One of the background tunes of the movie Bluffmaster( especially when Abhishek gets senti over his bandi ) is an exact copy of the song at the fag end of the movie Cruel Intentions. I had last watched the english movie atleast a year ago, but surprisingly today when i was browsing through Bluffmaster( people in Kgp will have a very good idea of how it is done ), the background score caught up my ear. On a hunch i look at Cruel Intentions and bingo !!! A perfect match !!
And after all this i got wondering ... where from did i get this memory !!! Because i hadn't listened the song atleast for a year, but today i got it out of nowhere !! Does music have a special effect on human memory. If you have music in the background can you memorize a thing faster and reproduce it even after a long time ? I think music buffs can answer a lot of these questions.
But most important , this incident restored a self-belief .... atleast my memory is still good enough !!!
By the way the song i am refering to is Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve. Guys can check it out .. even the lyrics are good !
Last of all .... why is the title Cruel Intentions .... well i have had a night out and its 6 am now ... so i guess i cant get a more suitable title .

Common Sense

2006-01-08T21:19:00.000-08:00

Major blogs I have visited have this wide spread array of topics ; believe me i have even been through blogs having discussions related to particle and astro physics . Though love/girls seems to be the most wide spread topic of all, my dear choke has certainly gone a step forward with his ideology over intercourse. Well my dish for the day is common sense. Two words carelessly tossed around having a subtle inner meaning which i think many people just fail to understand.
What exactly is Common Sense. We say a lot of people lack common sense. But what exactly do we mean by that ?
I've heard of this saying quite a number of times "Common Sense is the most uncommon thing among common people". My dad has re-iterated this phrase quite a number of times every time i go about my screwing business. Seems my common sense has tendencies of a government official, it goes on vacation quite often. And whenever my screwups are complete and I pause to look with satisfaction ....Bingo !!!! Common Sense is back with a bang with these words flashing in my mind " Man ...What have you done !!! " As damage control proceeds common sense works overtime . Finally when matters are settled , a tired common sense goes on a well deserved vacation and wham!!! .....screwing back in business .
So what exactly is common sense ? A subconscious feeling which tells you the difference between right or wrong ? Is it inculcated within or it can be imparted as a teaching sermon? And why the hell does it go on a vacation ??? ideas anyone ?

The Screwdriver

2006-01-08T06:43:00.000-08:00

Well finally the shell has broken. Tired and beaten I have taken up the literary path as means of reassuring myself that I still have some amount of self-respect left. So as I go on forward let me bring out the essence of the title "Screwdriver".
I still remember one crazy night while i accidental tried to find a summation of all efforts put in and its ratio to actual results which go in my favour, the final fraction indicated my life had strange resemblance to the screwdriver. Because for the past 4 years of my life i have spend half of the time passionately screwing up my life; and the other half unscrewing it. So given the long run, i have loads of experience but still i am rooted to the same spot from where I started. And this compulsive trait has followed me in my journey in this weird place. I screw my midterms and then try to salvage some of my lost pride in the endterms. I desperately hope to be a romantic, to fall in love ; and when i do claim to fall in love with some girl after 4 months i find out that its not love at all. If i were to offer some more examples of this screwing business , well it would be long boring and idiotic( well an idiot only screws up his life ) .
Right now i am trying to unscrew one of the biggest screw-ups in my life. Another long journey ahead till i find my place again.
I am wise but i accomplish nothing, I work hard but i get no results, I am a romantic but still single, and above all i am blunt as well as sharp
Thats me ...... a screwdriver.