pardes 3

Four and a half years later it is that I came back to New York, and many things are the same while a few have changed. There are definitely more buildings new and tall while the older ones stayed the same lending a familiarity.


As always, I do have something interesting going on every time I come over and this time it was the Macy's Thanksgiving parade which gave an extra color to the city.

Shorter though this trip is, it is a whirlwind tour of sorts covering three different corners of the US courtesy friends spread across the country. It was Boston first, San Francisco next and Houston last before I head back to India. From the Brooklyn bridge on the east to Golden gate on the west, from the Charles river on the north to the Galveston bay on the south, I could cover quite a few places far and wide, and meet friends after ages!

So this trip was about traveling, meeting friends and watching movies as well, Meet Joe Black, being the most prominent.


And an interesting date it is today - 12/12/12 and a good day to start back writing on the blog.

Inspiring and Aspiring India

Fifteen years have passed since I last stood before a gathered school audience and spoke on the Independence day about the great Indian freedom movement. It was the Golden jubilee year of independence and coincidentally my last year in school and the timing wouldn't have been any better. And like all speeches in school, mine mostly centered around stating the obvious and remembering the sacrifices of the freedom fighters and spelling out a hope for a bright future. I was just starting to see the world through my own eyes then..

Fifteen years later, now, when I try to recollect what I had dreamt of as a student and compare it to what transformation I have seen in these years, an accident that happened a couple of days ago comes to my mind.

I was on my way to Hyderabad from Hanamkonda in a bus and an hour into the journey, our bus hit an auto and the auto went topsy-turvy into the bushes by the road, in the process injuring the passengers in the auto. The bus driver fled the scene while the concerned bus passengers got down immediately to assess the injured. One of them called for an ambulance while others gave water to the injured. Everything was okay in a moment.

What followed impressed me the most. The ambulance arrived in less than five minutes. Considering the place wasn't near any town or village, it was a huge surprise, a great one.
And what followed later, disappointed me. We, the deserted bus passengers, had to wait for an hour for a replacement bus driver but never got one. Disappointed, we had to get into other buses plying in that route, but had to travel standing all the way to Hyderabad as there weren't any empty seats.

This dichotomy is probably what would summarize our nation of today. One, of an inspiring nation that made connectivity to each and every person possible and essential services available to the last mile. The other, of an aspiring nation trying to overcome the lack of infrastructure facilities and catering to the rising demand on limited resources.

Do we or don't we?

Should I snooze the alarm for another 15 mins? Can I afford to sleep for half an hour more? So begin the mornings for most of us - making decisions. Right from the time we wake up in the morning to the time we rest our senses into a deep sleep, we are involved in numerous tasks, each involving a certain component always, called 'decision making'. Some small, some big. Some mundane, some routine and some life changing. And the effort spent in arriving at the decision is proportional to the impact of the decision. Or is it?

What actually does go into this process of decision making? Is it like a piece of art, that is spontaneous and doesn't know how and why it turned up that way or is it a science with a logical, measured and practical answer to the question. It could be one of them or it could be both. It could differ by person, by situation and by the combination as well. Such a complex process it seems and sometimes all we have is probably a few milliseconds on hand to take a decision, especially if you are driving down the lanes of Hyderabad :)

People say experience aids in decision making. But neither do all decisions have a prior experience that can help. We only "decide" to poke an angry dog the first time, don't we? And neither is a decision transferable. What works for one might not work for another. Wouldn't we all be following Warren Buffet then? In most cases, it is the work of science and art together that aid in decision making, though in varying proportions. The science or the logical part brings in the pragmatic component to take a decision which is feasible in the first place and the art part provides the creative or the satisfactory component that lets one unleash his will or choice in the process of decision making within what is feasible. Anybody who bought a car or a bike, for example, can quickly connect to this. From the list of cars that 'fit' our budget, we pick the one that we 'like' the most.

And so continues the infinite loop of decision making..

It is these things that make life an enriching experience. The process of decision making, the decisions we take and the ensuing effect they have.


Should I post this now or just discard it? :)

The dwindling stars..

Immortalized in the minds of the viewers and on the plains of Himalayas were the choreographed classical dance sequences of the movie Swarna Kamalam. Rhythmic, fast, melodious and beautiful all at the same time. It wasn't alternate cinema, it was mainstream and both a commercial and critical success as well. So were the meticulously done diverse dance routines of Sagara Sangamam. Those were the kind which drew the layman to the sophisticated traditional arts like Kuchipudi and Bharathanatyam and instilled admiration in the minds of the common folk for these proficient masters of the art.

Not just a colorful treat to the eyes and a sweet sound to the ears, it was a source of inspiration when the protagonist bounced back from her deficiency to get back and excel in her profession in Mayuri and a conveyor of emotion when one of them danced perilously on the fort of a well. Songs could instill a sense of fear just by listening to them, soothing music from a simple flute could transport us to a different world, lyrics that could quench one's thirst for quality could all once be found. And in regular movies.

But where are they now, I wonder?!

Quick and Quicker..

After the pleasant experience of renewing my passport at the newly created Passport Seva Kendras, I am happy enough to write about it. Having heard so many complaints, in general, about the process of getting a new one or renewing it, the very idea of renewing mine gave me apprehension. I decided to start early and luckily, there was this huge advertisement in all newspapers about the process and I decided to check it out. Everything was online, starting from filling the form, uploading supporting documents and generating a token for the appointment. The site was well designed and did not give any problems though the lazy me took a few weeks to fill out the form!

And on the appointment day, I had to wait for a good 45 mins to get my turn submitting the documents and if I only I had enough of them, the whole process would have been completed in two hours. But it wasn't so for me. Had to do an extra trip for the documents. However, the reception was professional, the executives clarified all my questions and the whole process was so seamless and at the end of it all, I got my passport in exactly a week. Unbelievable, after what I heard from internet forums and friends. Sets an example to the way customer services should be delivered in our country. Hope all the other departments follow suit.

In other news, Rahul Dravid, 'the wall' of Indian cricket retired in what is a big loss to Indian cricket. The man stood for consistency, determination and humility. I always liked the way he spoke and consider myself lucky to have had such great cricketers playing in my cricket watching career!

a game with no losers..

Winning or losing is just a number, a point, a score or a rank. What really matters is the fight, the zeal and the effort. Nobody who saw the Australian open final recently would deny that. At the end how everyone wished that there were no winners and losers in games! After all, how can you pick one from the two who were giving the best of the best performances matching game to game, point to point and set to set. It came so close towards the end of the 4th and 5th sets that it was sheer pleasure to see a tired Djokovic fighting his only human body with an unlimited will power and the never-tiring Nadal returning back with all the might he can, never losing hope. At the end, one reached the summit and that, because the game ends at a score of 7-5.

There was a Verdasco vs Nadal and then a Nadal vs Federer sometime back, both showing the world that upsets and surprises are part of the game. But this one was no surprise. If you haven't watched the game, you would easily accept that Djokovic with a better rank was the obvious choice. But people who watched it, well, can tell you how this match is the best of the best. And can only praise Djokovic for his gargantuan effort in overcoming his physical limitations as a human and stretching that extra bit to win the game. And Nadal, for his unending fighting spirit going into the fourth set one set down and making it to the final game of the match ending on equal terms, well, almost.

If you are already a world champion and are in the final of a grand slam and on almost equal terms in score, what makes you put in that extra effort and win that game using up all the energy of your body and strength of your mind, is what separates champions from the rest.

2011++

2011 is out. 2012 is here.

Wishing all my readers a very happy new year. So I did neither better nor worse in 2011. With 14 posts each of the past two years, seems like I am setting a standard for the blog. Lets see if I can do a hat trick of 14 posts. In these days of twitter, I guess 14 is still an ambitious one.

Coming to 2012, the number has a special significance for me. "be2012" was my login id for four years of my Engineering and the number 2012 was probably the most I typed in those four years. The number brings back great memories of segmentation faults, C++ templates, long nights in labs and those tricky networking programs that kept me glued to the world of computers. And here I am into the eighth year of pro programming, which has now become my bread and butter, of course with a lot less segmentation faults and shorter nights at the computer. It is common philosophy and a very naive one at that, but want to reiterate that computers are these amazing machines that do exactly what you ask them to do, no less and no more. Obedient things they are!

And it was an interesting thing that happened the very next day I wrote my last post that I got to hear the Hyderabad traffic boss mention some statistics that a work force of 2000 is managing a traffic of 25 lakh vehicles in Hyderabad. That should give an idea how tough a problem it is. The infinite demand and limited resources equation is true after all!

Good luck for the new year and wish great things happen in my favorite year :-)