'Demo'-crazy

A rich star kid gets married. It wouldn't affect a single person on earth other than the family. Yet, the news channels show the whole saga day and night for two weeks. We don't like it. We do not complain.

The price of onions goes up by a couple of rupees. It affects the whole nation. Yet, no channel reports it. Nobody cares.

We do not like paying fine while speeding on a "Speed Limit 20KMPH" marked free highway. It doesn't make sense. We do not complain.

We say its a free nation. But people cannot express what they feel. It feels so wrong. We do not complain.

We do not like the policies of the Government. We do not have a choice till 5 years.

Why?
Because only a limited set of people take decisions and the rest of us have to accept. And why is that happening? Lets see.

In a democratic country, ruled by a Government for the people, by the people and to the people, how many of us actually exercise the power of Vote?

If our voting percentage is a meager 50-60% and a political party requires 60% majority to form the Government, that would mean that only 36% of the total population 'actually' approve of the Government. The rest, which, unfortunately is the majority, disapprove. Isn't it ironic that a party disapproved by the majority of the people forms the Government and rules the country for five years creating policies for the nation. And that is happening because "we" - the "we" who do not complain/care haven't voted.

And how easy is it for a powerful political party to capture 35% of the votes? A little money and some power can do the magic for them. But if they had to get the 60% to vote for them, they would have to do some real good to the country. As the old saying goes, we cant fool all the people all the time. Automatically, that would mean better policies and a better nation. Isn't it?

So, the next time somebody tells us its polling day in our place, lets not sleep late and enjoy the holiday. Lets go, vote, and make a difference.
Otherwise be prepared to SMS your guess about the chance of a movie star marrying a cricket player and we will all spend our day cribbing about it and never complaining. Its not the fault of the channels. Just that the feedback and the TRP ratings suggest they go in that direction. So if you want it to be changed, better give them your feedback.

Issued in public interest. No offence meant.

the days...

It was raining cats, dogs and even fly-overs over the past month in Hyderabad, which kept the whole city busy and I was no exception :). It reminded everyone of the good old rhyme "Rain rain go away, come again the next day..little johnny wants to play". Nothing wrong in little johnny wanting to play but the parks in Hyderabad were no safe either...so unlike many of us who spent our childhood running around streets and parks, these new generation kids were warned not to go to parks :( poor fellows, had no choice but to stay indoors and make their paper boats sail over the flowing rain-water than go run around in the rain..

Talking about rhymes, paper boats and parks, isn't it true that we all love our past days and cherish them the most? We remember a lot of things about the past, like the first running race we ran in class 2, thinking that we would easily outrun everybody, but to our own surprise ended up on the ground, midway to the finish line, knees hurt and crying?? I know, PT Usha would not relate to that scene :-) but most of us would. Right?

When we tried heroism like in the movies, trying to ride bicycles hands-free and returned home with a broken rim and a bunch of alternative ideas to beg for the 150 bucks needed to get the bicycle back to shape. The day we bought the big Preity Zinta poster when we realized that we would no longer be seeing the dimpled girl daily, only to realize that posters don't speak. The days when we stood in the line at 8 AM to get the first day first show's tickets and the moment we put our hand in, the guy announced "tickets khatham ho gaye" and left us in a state of shock...

Of exams, OMR sheets, results, marks and seats...

And once in college, the list has no end.. of parties, 2 AM chais, one night exam preparations, egos, best friends, craziness, movies, "projects", goa and everything..

The point is, why does everything of the past seem so beautiful now, though there were some not-so-beautiful things also back then. As far as I remember, half of the time during those days we were busy thinking/dreaming about the future. I guess most of us would agree that those days wouldn't have been any better but given a chance to go back in time, who would not want to take it?

But then we were told, "Here's the game called Life. You want to play the game, play by the rule. And the rule says .. "There's no second chance"" .. only we were too busy to listen. :-)

lazy, independent and asleep

Much to the delight of the readers of the blog(all one of them), my carpals are back to work and so here comes a post after a really long time.

But wouldn't it be a great idea if a blog wrote posts by itself? Something like quines, but more sophisticated so that it printed out different stuff each time, some of them sensical and some of them non-sensical, just like what this blog has :)

Anyway, back to blogging, questioning, answering and everything !!

Come August and "Independence Day" is what comes to every Indian's mind. The three colors of the flag seem to be everywhere. And this year being the sixtieth year of independence, the diamond jubilee year, it was more so special. From ice creams to huge hoardings, the three colors were the predominant of the spectrum.

But do people still remember why, how, when we became independent and what it means to be independent? I am not sure. But yeah, definitely, people are more cognizant about who Mr. Gandhi is, now. Stop a kid on the road and ask him who Gandhi is and more often than not we will get the answer - "Yeah, I know him, Isn't he the guy who acted alongside Sanjay Dutt in Lage Raho". Good that in one way or other, the man and his principles are still remembered in some way or the other. :)

One thing is clear. Movies have become the most powerful media tool in these days. From history to sports, you want to drive a point, movies is the way. May be it was like that always, only I am realizing it late. People dont seriously take some sport unless a top hero endorses the sport by acting in one of those sport-movies. And the real sportspersons, poor them, they do not have so much fan following, even though they are the ones who win real cups.

But there is a flip side to it too. Imagine Sachin's case, there are people who still complain that he got out on 99 in two of the last five innings he played. There is no limit to what people expect from you, once you are a hero :)

Guess all of this is part of the bigger saying "phir bhi dil hai hindustani". Only we can complain about traffic jams, while we are the ones causing it :)

while you were sleeping ...

Its been three years now from the day I answered the final question in the Mobile Computing paper explaining the protocol architecture of WAP. It felt like the longest answer I ever wrote, not because I was unaware of WAP, but because I was too eager to get out. :) That day marked the end of an era, an era of Questions and Answers, an era that most of us call 'the golden era', the era that started from 'I class B section' and ended at 'B.E.'. That day the gigantic Engineering college building stood there smiling, standing as testimony to the day that marked the end of that era.

From that day, three years, that is more than a thousand days have passed. The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of what I did these three years is typing. :)) I have typed more words than I have talked. Courtesy, the software field. Other than that, the journey is pretty much the story of Rip Van Winkle. Remember the guy who falls asleep and wakes up after twenty years to see that the whole world has changed and he wasn't even aware? Something similar I can say. Or may be the journey all these years was just like a good dream, too comfortable to wake up.

Lots of things were part of the good dream. The independence, the luxury, the satisfaction and much recently a trip around the world taking me to the place of Mr. Winkle himself. Isn't it coincidence again? :)

"What??!!?? Its been three years? THREE years just went by? But when?" I asked myself and the title of the post is what I got as an answer.

All in all, the era that succeeded the golden era is close to being called golden, but not exactly the same.

I picked.

Remember the kid from the movie Kuch Kuch Hotha Hai, busy counting stars on a starry night? That kid is the inspiration for this post.

I have been asking myself a similar question these days. What do you do when you have nothing to do? How do you pass time? I know, different people have different answers. Some of them are happy solving the Barber Paradox, some of them try creating a few when they are free, while others have a target and move in the direction of their target and some of them blog. Yeah, there are sports, but haven't we pledged not to watch the game called cricket and was the recent French open a replay of last year's games? I don't know. So there is not much interesting there either, at least in the ones I understand. So sports ruled out. And movies, I think we talked about them in the last post.

I remember I fell in the category where people blogged in their free time, but its been a month and the blogger part of my brain has been inactive :-(

Keeping all of this in view, isn't it easy to spend time counting stars, like the intelligent little kid? That way we always have something to do every night. We can recount them everyday to see if our previous day's count was correct and most probably we end up being wrong and we have a new count to start :-) But there is a problem. The Hyderabad night sky doesn't give you the chance to do this. Serious people say it is because of pollution and 'global warming'. Whatever be the reason, there aren't any stars to count. So we have to drop the idea.

So I figured I could count my blog posts ('stars', thats what I call them) and pick the best ones. My first thought was to pick the top 5 but I ended up picking 21 of them :-(.
I had to prune the list and finally came up with a list of 12. The criteria being these are posts I LIKED, readers liked and for some of them, the comments provided some good reads, thanks to the commenters. So all in all, presenting to the reader community the best 12 posts of this blog. I have included them in a separate section on the right, so someone new can quickly take a look and get a sense of what this blog provides to the world :))

Any feedback will be appreciated. Inclusions/deletions will be considered :-) Picking 12 out of 75 was tough. Like the old sentimental saying "can you pick your favorite of the two eyes?" ;-)

We, the people.

Seems like the job resumes and eligibility criteria in India have changed in recent days.
Nowadays there are just two columns in one's resume. One, the name, and the second asking how the candidate is eligible and the second one always has the same answer "My father/mother/ancestor has been in this profession and was successful".

Does that entitle you to become eligible for the same profession? I am afraid, looks like it is true.
How else can you answer the hundreds of movies dumped on us every Friday just because the children of earlier actors want to start their acting career. How long has it been since we saw a new actor without a movie background?

This phenomena, I observe, is not really movie-specific. It has spread its wings in all directions and all professions. Guess, who the latest politician on the block is? Wasn't he/she the son/daughter of an earlier minister? Who was the magician you saw the other day trying to break an earlier record? Wasn't he trying to break the record set by his own father, who was a magician himself? And who won the recent Booker Prize? By the way, wasn't her mother a Booker prize nominee herself?

So, here we have a pattern. No wonder, children are always inspired by their parents and tend to develop interest in the same field as their parents, but as we observe, this is evolving into a more common trend than usual.

But wait, does anybody remember a similar thing read in a history class in school. What was it called? Yeah, the society in ancient India divided people based on the occupation. Families had a single occupation and all members of the family, irrespective of their choice, had to practice the same occupation. Lets leave the merits and demerits of such a system, but somehow with Independent India, this system was out and the "free" system came in. But after 60 years are we actually going in the original direction?

How many doctors today are children of doctors? How many engineers are children of engineers? Painters, singers, musicians, actors, politicians, sportsmen, pick the field and we have a parent and child famous there. Seems like we are reaching where we actually started.

Is this called what we know as "History repeats itself"?

Reasons may vary but I feel, we are going there. Though, earlier, the social status of a person depended on the kind of occupation he did, the only change with the current trend, I see is, the social status of a person now is based on the amount of public attention he gets. Remember the marriage that got covered for a whole week by the press? Was it because the children were famous or the parents? No offence meant!

One can argue, this is uncommon with "we, software engineers" ;-) Aren't we trend-setters :-). On a serious note, I guess we have to wait for one more generation for an argument like that. Lets see how many s/w engineers in 2050 are offspring of s/w engineers :-)

As usual, lets end with a question... Are the children any better than what their parents were?

Part Deux

I saw, I liked, I learnt.
I waved, I cheered, I talked.
I asked, I gave, I took.
I argued, I fought, I explained.
I stayed, I understood, I waited.
I hoped, I expected, I prayed.

But you left me in anguish and THE GAME has never been the same.

Happy Birthday to YOU.

... and the phoenix never rose when it had to.

back home

What's different?
Not many. Just a few.
The skyward horizon doesn't have skyscrapers anymore. What I see are just clouds and some stars.
Trees with green leaves compared to the leaf-less fall trees back in New York.
Yellow autos replace the yellow cabs!

What's changed?
Nothing. The biryani tastes the same, though they pushed the prices up a bit making it less affordable !
The traffic chaos is still the same with the "360 degree theory" still in effect. Anybody can hit you from any direction at any time, which is what the theory says.

What's new?
Was I expecting that something new would come up? I am not sure.
But one thing surprised me. The new 2 rupee coin! The new coin is so much in circulation already that I get a coin everytime I get some change. Something is different about the coin. Things are not center aligned somehow:(

Everything else is same, unchanged and old, including me! :)

stumped !!

Let's go forward 60 years in time ...

It was the summer of 2067. Sunny was ecstatic. He just finished his fourth grade and was eagerly waiting for his summer holidays. The whole three months. He thought he would play some football, fly kites and learn swimming. But only one thing worried him. The assignment his Fifth grade teacher gave him for the summer holidays. He wondered what the fifth grade had in store for him if he had to solve assignments even before school started. But he thought the assignment was fun. Who would not? If it was about games. But there was one problem. He had never heard about the game. In fact, he could not pronounce it. He tried spelling it out to his watch-cum-pda for any search results the internet would give him. Nope, none he could find. How would he, after all he was spelling it as "kraikate", "chrichet" and finally he got it right. Boom popped the result on his PDA. The first result said "Cricket - Extinct game in India since April 2007". "Oh ! Was it something from the early 21st century? Then Grandpa would be able to help me", Sunny thought and added to his list of reminders to ask his grandfather about the game when he visits him in summer holidays.

A month later, Sunny's reminder beeped and he went straight to his grandpa and asked him "Grandpa, what is see--aar--ai--see--kay--ee-tee?".
His granddad was surprised. How did this kid know about the game now extinct for many years? "Tell me about the game, I gotta know about this one" Sunny said.

So the old man started telling about the great game of kings. How the game evolved from a royal one, played by select people, to a common man's game running in the bloods of every kid ever born in the late 20th century in the country, and how without holding a pen you could graduate from school, but without holding a bat and ball in your life, you would not be called complete. How all the kids used to spend all their pocket money in buying cricket balls, how they utilized the old, unused furniture turning them into things called bats, how the walls in their rooms never needed paint, because every year a new cricket hero's poster replaced an earlier one and the "new look" stayed forever.

He spoke to Sunny about how, as a kid, he bunked school to watch live cricket matches, sometimes missing meals, having to lie to teachers about sudden stomach-ache and then run back home to see India batting and applaud for every run they made and curse the opposition team for every wicket India lost.

Sunny was amazed at the kind of passion with which his grandfather was talking about the game. He had seen a movie called Gandhi once, where people had the same look on their face when India was declared independent. That same look appeared on the old man's face. Sunny thought the game should really have meant to lot to his grandpa.

The old man continued telling tales of all the heroes ever born in the cricket world and how many of them were from India and how every four years he would cancel all his appointments for a one month period to watch all the World Cup matches, live. He went on for hours before Sunny interrupted "But grandpa, how did a game with such unbelievable craze become extinct? What happened?"

His grandfather laughed hysterically and then started.. "Sunny, it was in 2007. The Indian team was enjoying Godly status, each one of the players was a hero. People worshipped them, prayed for their victory and they were equally capable too. Some of them were the best in the history of the game and eyes around the world were on them. The world cup started. The very first match, these demi-gods showed how even Gods can be mortal. Not because they were overpowered by other immortals but because they could not use their capabilities. They showed no passion whatsoever. In the third game again, the team collapsed like a pack of broken cards built on quick sand. It was shocking. The team was out of the world cup in the very first stage. A billion hearts broke. And people don't forget, Sunny, their hopes were shattered, and from that day nobody ever spoke of the game. The players returned and the democratic government that we had, made a wise decision that the game and the team were given too much importance and if only the people had shown the same interest and concentration on education, we would have had 100% literacy - instead of everybody knowing the know-hows of Duckworth-Lewis rule, they would be kowing that the English alphabet had 26 letters. So cricket was out, never to be played again. And that's how the game has ceased to exist".

Eventually Sunny completed his assignment and learnt how to pronounce the word too :-)

Coming back to present, we now know what the Greeks went through when Achilles was hit right in the heel. But the Greeks won back then. They had something to cheer about. And we? Nothing !!

the lazy weekend

It was a lazy Saturday morning and I was thinking of ways to spend my unplanned weekend when I opened my browser to start the day checking mails, a usual ritual since almost three years now. As usual, the home page google.com opened up on my favorite browser. Not many of us would have google.com as their home page, I assume. The reason being obvious. How many of us have creative things to search for, the first time your browser starts up. Obviously I am not one of them. But I chose google because of the light interface and the time it takes to come up. It is fast and also doubles up as an indicator of the internet connection speed, so I know how many mail accounts I can check in ten minutes :)

So this fine day, March 17th, as I was going through the same ritual, I observed an interesting logo with three green leaves, on the google home page. Now a new logo on Google home page would mean that the day was special in some way. Any google
holiday logo fan would know that. Their holidays logos are so famous! Intrigued by the green, simple logo, I thought I would find out what it was about. A single click on the logo told me it was St. Patrick's day.

St. Patrick's day?? Wow, I thought. All I knew was that there was a St. Patrick's Cathedral two blocks away from the place I stay and I guessed there would be some kind of celebration there and I was happy I had something to do on this lazy weekend. Little more googling helped me discover it was lot more than just celebrations that mark the day. The Cathedral hosts one of the biggest parades in New York on St. Patrick's day and millions of people witness it, as I understood. Wow, that would be a thrilling start for the weekend, I thought.

So, in an hour, I set out to witness the awesome parade myself. So many people. I have never seen such crowd. An India-Pakistan cricket match would have come close but I haven't seen that one either :). The Avenue was closed both ends and groups marching in the parade with music, discipline and cheering from the audience. Green was the color of the day. Irish was the theme. Green hats, Green t-shirts, Irish flags, captions, logos were seen everywhere. It was fun to be witnessing such a grand event. Various colleges, schools, offices, departments had their groups marching in the parade. The whole city was right there, playing audience to this grandiose event.

I wondered how I did not know about an event of this grandeur, before hand. May be it was so obvious, no one needed to discuss it. Now, the sale of green t-shirts the night before makes sense.

Let the pictures describe more . . .







How much would I have missed if google was not my homepage!! :)

Coming back to cricket, the world cup has started and already half of the Indian fans have lost hope. The rest of the matches are for the other half.

Which half are you in?

charts maketh us

Personality charts.

Not one, not two, but there are hundreds of these charts that tell us what kind of persons we are and what our traits are, based on the date we were born, based on our favorite color and some of them even based on how much sugar we add to our coffee. No matter what kind of person you really are, these lists have some good ones for you!!

One such chart divides the dates in the year into groups named after trees. Say, if you are born in the first ten days of June, you have fallen from the Cedar tree, and there is a list of traits associated with persons falling from Cedar trees - honest, outgoing, enjoys animals (??)

One more similar list groups people into fruits based on the birth date and with a completely different set of features.

Imagine the same guy “falling from an Olive tree” based on one list and “is an apple” based on another similar chart based on fruits. What would that mean? Is he a mismatch :( having fallen from an Olive tree but is an “apple” instead of being an olive? Which of the characteristics apply to him? What if one of the lists actually mentions that he “hates contradictions and arguments”?
Wouldn’t it be even worse that his actual classification among different charts is itself a contradiction, leave alone the rest of the traits. He is already one confused person while “confused” is not on the list of traits in any of the charts!!

If you fell from a Cypress tree you tend to fight for social causes, eat less, are keen on keeping fit and so on. And what would a believer do? Yes, he would start raising his voice over how rats are fed high calorie food in a particular household leading to high cancer in rats, assuming it is a social cause and he has to fight for it, just because it is mentioned in his “list”!! He might as well really eat less and start working out which would make matters worse :(

Not impossible!!

But preparing these lists is way too easy. I have figured two ways of how such charts are prepared.

One - Make a list of adjectives like sensitive, truthful, passionate, empathetic, independent, humorous, courageous, tolerant and all possible synonyms of these, group them and lo, you have a chart for yourself. Attach some date ranges to each of the groups. If you want a chart based on favorite colors, you just have to attach a color to a group of synonyms, instead of the date range. Wasn’t that easy?

Two - This approach is a better one, because you can actually show it is true. For a particular date range, pick the list of famous people born in the date range, get the list of their traits - hard working, athletic, born leader etc and lo, for each date range you have a list of characteristics which are actually true.

So the next time someone says you are a great speaker, intellectual and an innovator just because you are born on February 12th, don’t fall for it. It is quite possible that the list was made from one of the approaches mentioned above. Abraham Lincoln was a great speaker born on the same day, after all. Not you.

Not that I fell for that list :)

What kind of a chart do you want to make?

Charts maketh us or we maketh charts? :)

limits and numbers !!

The numbers 2 and 3 started appearing predominantly these days. Might be the movie bug has caught me, but it’s true too.

This time the numbers with a slash in between, i.e., 2/3 - tell the number of cities in the US, to which I have been to. And that count also says how many of the three biggest cities in the US I have visited :) New York first and now Chicago is on the list after the fun-filled trip this weekend.

So many hurdles to the trip, first the snow storm postponing it, then flights getting delayed, cancelled but finally I could make it there.

The trip was thrilling - to see a beautiful city in full splendor, exciting - as it was my first trip outside NY, nostalgic - witnessing college life and meeting old friends and getting lost in long chats, adventurous - going on long trips in snow, cultural - visiting temples :), disappointing - missing trains and having to wait for hours together, and last but not the least, coincidental - again with the number 23, because that was the date I landed there :) There is a word called limit but seems like that does not apply to the coincidences that happen to me!!

Over all, it was a memorable trip and thanks to a bunch of friends who made the weekend all the more eventful!

And coming to the continuation of the story from the previous post, let me add to the story something: " . . . " that's all I have now in the story so far, just three more dots!! :)

a true 'story'

There was a guy and then there was a girl and . . .

Happy Valentine's day to one and all.

the number 23..

The number 23 - the upcoming movie of one of my favorite actors, Jim Carrey. The plot, just like his earlier movie, seems promising. Finding that a particular book's plot has parallels with your own life is, of course, thrilling.

But that's not the whole point of the title for this post. If you have already guessed the actual point, a big thank you. But for the others, the point is -

I have turned 23 years old today !!

Yes, its funny how the movie 'The number 23' is will be released just after I am turning 23. Guess there is some parallel going on with me and the movie too ;). That should be interesting.

Of course this is not the lone coincidence associated with the day. One year back, exactly when the clock struck 00.01 am on February 12th, I was on my way back to Hyderabad, from Coimbatore, just finishing our South India trip on the South Central railway train. The place was a non-descript place somewhere between Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, I do not even know, which state it was.

And exactly after one year, the same clock struck 00.01 am on February 12th and I find myself in the New York local train heading to Downtown, Manhattan. Again I dint exactly know where I was, as the train was running underground ;)

So trains first, and then being in 'unknown places'...in total, coincidences, in their best form, mark my birthday.

While its a different story that the Coimbatore to Hyderabad experience was unique in the way I cut my cake in the running train, thus waking fellow passengers, courtesy a bunch of enthusiastic and great friends, this new york travel was rather calm, only I realizing how much change a year brings in :)

From a South India trip to a New York trip, from among friends to among globe-trotters, from cutting cakes to visiting City Halls, from paddy field views to Manhattan skyscraper views, from night to day :), one year has brought me far.

Hope its not too far !!

with the paintings...

A trip to the Museum of Modern Art and I realized my position in terms of appreciating art or rather, modern art. Who wouldn't want to view the great pieces of art by the Picassos, Van Goghs and the like. So was I, all set to experience the beauty of the world famous paintings at this museum.

But something seemed wrong the moment I saw the first piece of art. It was very bright, colorful but somehow I couldn't make out what it was. I tried to read the name of the painting and made a valiant attempt to co-relate the title to the painting. Even then, nothing seemed right. Little did I realize that this was the first to come from among the tens of "modern art" paintings that would flood my day and leave me in a confused state for the next couple of days.

Painting after painting, each one was different, each one was unique in the way the title and the painting were unrelated (or may be related). One of the names said, 'A little girl' and I had to use all my stereoscopic vision only to realize that I am not qualified to find a girl in that picture. Solving fourth degree polynomial equations was lot easier :(. At least now I know I am an illiterate in the subject of "art". I should have known it when I almost failed in my drawing class, but somehow I wasn’t sure then. Now I am.

I could not just accept it and get out of the place. Instead I chose to try and understand. I stood staring for longer times at pieces of art by familiar artists. Picasso kept me standing for long, for one, he had a large number of paintings under his name and the other, because I knew his name the most.

I guess it was for people like me that some of the paintings had an explanation too, besides having a title. But that didn’t help me either. It added to more confusion. One of them said "The blue square in the middle of the painting reflects the human sub-conscious". I said to myself "What?!! how??!! and How did you know??!!!" and all this added to more confusion so I moved along.

The terms "surreal", "abstract expressionism" and "layers of creativity" were found all over on the description plates. How a particular painting was special because the artist spilled over ink on a flat canvas 'uniformly' so that spilled ink created a sense of beauty. ??!!??? Everything pointed to the same words - "Art is not for you" and I had to accept it. :)

But one thing was fascinating. How different objects intercepted each other in some paintings, yet could be clearly distinguished. Even I could appreciate some, I thought ! May be if I tried.

So I kept moving until I came across two kids around four years old looking at one of these paintings and trying to draw them in their own drawing book, with their teacher beside them, guiding. I could not believe my eyes. At that age I would rather be happy trying to draw a frog and ending up drawing a lizard, leave alone attempting to reproduce a modern-art painting. But what were they trying to draw? There were no distinguishable objects in the painting except for a surreal idea flowing between colors of different variety. Guess that's what separates me from budding-artists, I thought, and this time I realized it was time to leave.

After the trip, even chess board seems to be a wonderful painting to me :) May be the designer of the board had something creative in his mind too !!!

Dear to dream !!

I just completed my trip up the Mt. Everest, got selected into the Indian cricket team and was saying "Hello" to the President while receiving the Khel Ratna award and planning an audition for the MRF ad alongside Sachin later in the day and ....suddenly the alarm clock starts 'trinnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggg' and I wake up to face the real Mt. Everest called life standing before me repeatedly telling me how many astronomical miles I am far away from my dream.

Dreams... !!! Well, I am not talking about the dreams of the "I have a dream" kind, rather these are the "I had a dream" kind.

These spells of imagination which some of us experience daily are pretty intriguing and complex at the same time, besides being so powerful. They can make us Kings of the world in one second and can get us hunted by a hungry lion within a gap of 10 seconds. Who else is so powerful? God comes close?

And the best part with these dreams is the 'uncontrollability' factor which is mysterious and interesting.

We may not be Sigmund Freuds but some of these may co-relate to events of the past or events during the previous day. Trying to understand or interpret these dreams is some times fascinating and we can either get a whole new meaning out of your dream and get inspired or can get devastated at the incidents we see in these dreams.

And the sheer pleasure when one of these dreams actually comes true the next day, like the Mathematics question paper having the same question you saw in your dream can be rejuvenating. Well, not so much if you aren't prepared for that one but somehow it got into your dreams and in the exam paper :)

The imagination part, no bounds to it. You might have imagined a Cyclop in a hundred ways while you were reading the Trojan War but the Cyclop that you see in your dreams is way better, I mean way dreadful.

The creativity part...amazing. You could be driving a golden chariot equipped with Bridgestone tyres overtaking Michael Schumacher riding his Ferrari while listening to 92.7 FM playing in in the background. Could there be a limit to the creative canvas of the dream?

The unpredictability part. We can never be sure of anything in dreams. Your golden chariot can have a puncture the very next moment and throw you down in the Arctic ocean ( remember you were traveling between planets ;) ) and you would be frozen for 100 years to be found by a group of aliens later and the rest is...unpredictable as usual.

All in all, "dreams" is a great topic of interest having complexity, creativity, uncontrollability, unpredictability and most importantly the involvement of brain in some unknown way. I guess that is what makes dreams all the more dearer and exciting. Where else can you see the Taj Mahal daily even though you don’t stay in Agra :)

Day-dreaming is okay but dreams - aren't they dear?

the new old look

The blog is now upgraded to the new blogger account. I guess it is obvious that something has changed - with the archive links on the right, now, well-organized and the "About me" section becoming almost invisible. May be it went to its rightful place :), quoting in the lines of Salman Rushdie's, "blogs should go out and become famous, writers can stay home and write (and remain unknown)".

But I was disappointed. The first thing that came to my mind when I saw "Update to the new blogger" was that I would get a new set of templates to choose from. But to my dissatisfaction, the same old templates showed up in the new one too. May be they want the bloggers to become creative and create their own templates :). So even after the upgrade, our blog shall have the same old template.

And yeah, integration with google. I can now log-in to blogger with my google account. May be in the near future, every site we use will let us in if we have google account, like a universal log-in account, offering services ranging from mails to online-shopping to social networking to gambling :)

Don't be surprised if in future, you get a mail to your gmail account that a music album you discussed with your friend over chat the previous day is now available at a nearby store for discount and the mail gives you driving directions to the store and even lets you share the music with your friends, besides helping you post a review of the album on your blog and finally helps you place the album for sale on the internet, if you do not like it. It might be called the UISP, Universal Internet Service Provider :) Google is going there I guess, and fast!

A change is always for the better, they say, and the first thing that is better is I do not have to remember the password of my blogger account, now that I can use a google account to post on my blog.

Statistics!! The blog has 63 posts so far and this one is the 64th. And the good thing to note is that the posts have increased every year. This again, I could know straightaway, thanks to the new blogger. Otherwise I would have to count them manually.

Thanks blogger, you not only have given a blog to write but, with the new version, you have given some content to write a post while I was waiting for some topic to write!

pardes

I am back, as promised, with (and in) pardes, seven seas away from home, as they say.

It would seem that I am listing down Shah Rukh's movies as the titles for my posts. Swades earlier, now pardes. But let me clarify, that's not the case. Its just coincidence. And please do not expect a 'Dilwale Dulhaniye lejayenge' in the future, although I cannot guarantee ;-)

New York. In one line, New York is all sky scrapers, huge LCD screens showing baseball games, organized streets, fast walking people, coffee, low calorie food, "good morning" wishes, limousines, high end cars and much more besides being the business capital.

Someone already said that this place is a world in itself and I am already seeing it. You can see people, culture, cuisines from all over the world in this city.

And one thing's for sure. You can't believe what you see here. You see out of your window, its a bright sunny day and you come out only to see that its freezing cold outside. I started to believe weather.com more than my eyes these last few days. :-)

Of course, there are some usual things too here.

You see the voice message LED blinking on your office phone early in the morning and you are all excited to get the first voice message in alien town and what you hear is a message in a language you don't understand, about a product you can't catch even after listening to the whole message. :-( [The language was definitely not English]. Sounded like the "Want a credit card?" calls I used to get back home.

And yeah, the alu doesn't turn golden brown in color even here :-( I never understand how the chefs get that right. Or is it just a myth?

All in all, I am not yet 'lost in NY'. :-)

From circles to squares, [yeah from Punjagutta circle to Times Square ;-)], the journey has been quick and easy. Lets hope the rest of the stay also will be memorable.

Before I start singing "Deewane ne, mujh ko bhi, kar daala deewana" like SRK singing while driving a convertible in the movie, I think I will have to see more of NY. The Statue of Liberty is still waiting.

There's one more song from the same movie Pardes, which I guess I should be singing when I go back :-)

And here's the second display of my photographic skill. The first one was a scene all natural and this one depicting human-made-architecture.


Place : Opp. Times Square, NY. Date : Today. Time : Shown in the clock in the picture.
Title : Untitled(so far).

what do u want to be?

"I want to be a police officer", says the kid when his uncle asks him "Beta, what do you want to be when you grow up?". And "why beta" would get an answer something like "I like the dress and the gun". Typical child answers. We all have seen kids crying for a police dress. Minor things like the dress and the gun are what appeal to the young kid at that age. Nothing else matters to him.

Few years later, ask the grown-up kid the same question and he says "I want to be an IAS officer". Ask him why and he has reasons for it too "because he has more power than a police officer and is paid better". This is the stage where one gets to learn what actually rules the world - power and money. Naturally, he wants them both :)

While in the pursuit of his "What do I want to be", the kid now in his teens toils hard to realize his "power and money" dream until one fine morning he happens to see a real beauty. Suddenly he forgets all his earlier answers to the question. Ask him the same question and his answer from that moment would be "I want to own the beauty". Well, he really can't state a reason for this one, because some things can't be explained. But the reasons range from beauty, attraction, sense of happiness, etc. That beauty becomes the passion of the kid from that moment and all his energies are spent trying to realize his dream from then on.

Like most of the people in pursuit of their passions end up becoming Software Engineers, the kid finally becomes a s/w engineer and within no time becomes the "owner" of his favorite. Now that he has "become" something, ask him the question - "What have you become", he would rather say "I have become the owner of favorite-item" rather than "I am a software engineer". Here, there are multiple reasons. Firstly because most uncles do not understand what a s/w engineer does and why they are paid so much for sitting in an AC room for 8 hours and it is real trouble trying to explain the concepts of outsourcing, internet etc, and secondly because passion is more important than profession, because profession was a means, not an end.

From what is "eye-catching" to what is "ideal" to what is "important to us", I guess, our interests change as we grow. Or do they actually evolve? From things of no significance to anybody to things of importance to others to, finally, things of significance to one's self? Self or “I” being utmost important.

A Long and heavy post to start the year with. Happy New Year 2007 to all :). Hope this year brings in more posts, comments and most importantly readers too!!

Coming soon is the other side of ‘swades’ because the kid has just answered "I am going to be a guest of New York". ‘parades’ follows !! :)