Two Hundred And Two

Its been exactly 2 years since I started blogging and this is the 200th post. This follows the 100th blog which came on the first anniversary of Kaleidoscope

I am not sure if this is an achievement, and if it is, then, I got to thank Mithun who kept pushing me to start a blog of my own. Its still hard to believe why he never told me that he himself had a blog since almost an year when I finally started blogging but let bygones be bygones…suffice it to say that my blogging started mainly because of him.

Last year was a significant year for my blogging. I expanded my arena of blogging from just kaleidoscope to a multitude of other areas that interest me.

~My heretofore articles written since 1997 which were rotting away in my old desktop found a new lease of life in Eclipse.

~My dingy, dappled, dilapidated and almost destroyed little notebook containing the complete list of novels - with my own ratings - which I have ever read also made way to the internet in the form of Booklog, thanks to ‘Publish’ option available on Google Docs. First let me thank Preetham for telling me about this, amongst million other things which he has told me!

~The intricate and basic thoughts that kept flowing in my mind about Carnatic music and the desire to share it with the world gave birth to Shruthi. Needless to say, inspiration for starting this goes to Deepti Navaratna (who has inspired me in more ways than I can list but yet have listed here and here!) whose Carnatic blog was the first Carnatic blog which I read on the net.

~Much too important stuff was happening in the world, much better stuff was written else where, and my desire of sharing it with public gave birth to Stimulus, where, to be honest, my contribution in the posts is bare minimum if not null.

~After the Pondicherry trip last year, Achala asked why I do not write travelogues in my Kaleidoscope blog. I realized it would be better to have a separate blog for my travel trips, and since I was coming up with a separate blog, why not write about all trips I had ever been to, as far as I can remember, and thus formed Locus.

~The hugely popular Vishnupuran episodes which I had noted down - for no particular reason - while watching on TV got a new lease of life in Vishnupuran.

The year also saw me re-structuring and re-designing the layout of Kaleidoscope blog to be more in sync with the tone and the content of the blog. I removed the links pertaining to my favorite blogs much to the chagrin of many. Chagrin, because some were using that to access those blogs and some just lost the free marketing! But thanks to Preetham again, I was introduced to Google Reader which makes blog-reading so simple as it uses RSS feeds and highlights only those blogs which has new posts instead of patrons manually and painfully checking each blog to see if its updated or not.

It will be interesting to see how the 3rd year will be and what changes, if any, will follow. Only time will tell, till then (so many “ll”s!!), three cheers for this second birthday!!

Hubli

Suddenly, I am hearing Hubli everywhere.

..Car coming from Hubli to Bangalore makes headlines as all 6 passengers die in a freak accident. May their soul rest in peace.

..A new guy joined our team in office. His last name is Hubli.

..Friend of mine is going to Hubli to attend her best friend’s wedding.

..Buses and flights to Hubli easily spotted and heard (boarding calls) respectively during my brief stay in Mumbai.

..I read an article about Sudha Murthy and learnt that she hails from Hubli as well. [Am I the next NRN in the making? ;-)]

Dreams and Movies

Our eyes are closed but…

We laugh;
We cry;

We shriek in fright;
We smile;

Sometimes senseless;
Sometimes with intricately astonishing details!

Sometimes we are mere audience;
But suddenly, at times, we are the characters too!

Going to sleep is like going to a theatre!
For, the dreams that we see, are better than any multi-dimensional movie!

Me and MBA

Reproduced below is an extract of one of the most interesting chat discussions I ever had. About a month ago, a person who likes my blogs pinged me on Google Talk. We hardly know one another and it was the first time I was chatting with him, but his few words made me feel nice about myself and I was very much honored. I kept thinking about what he said over the next couple of days so much so that I thought it deserved an entry in my blog:

vijay: your blogs are awesome than anything
how do u think man!!!!!!!!!
its really superb
many dont have it
think it should come by birth
are you doing your MBA

me: Thats an honor!
thanks a lot!
no no...i am just a BE grad

vijay: but dont miss to take MBA
you be an excellent manager
thats what i fell

me: hahaha..i am an excellent manager without mba ;)

vijay: wow great

me: hahaha...just kidding
i am good with my jnrs..and they enjoy being with me...so i felt i am good :)

vijay: ok

me: but how come you thot abt my Management skills while reading blogs?

vijay: i usually say what i fell in my senses, ur way of thinking and putting up right at right situations and your expressions
and more can be felt by your blogs
i really thgt u r an MBA

Now that really is an honor. But on a lighter note, if I am adjudged to be an MBA grad because of my blogs, well, it just saved me from a lot of studying ;-)

False Accusation

I was heading back home from office in the bus. I was sitting on the front seat and had almost the same view through the windshield as did the driver. If you have read this, you would know who I recommend as a Good Driver, and this bus driver was a Good Driver. He did not honk unnecessarily, he respected people on the road, was in complete control of the situation and never gave any fright to any passenger.

We were cruising through this real narrow road that has a median, making sure that only a bus and perhaps a two-wheeler (with difficulty) can travel in the same lane. As we were moving along, a very old man with a walking stick started crossing the road about 100 yards ahead. Perhaps the old man didn’t see the bus or if he did see, he thought he could cross the road by the time the bus reached him. As it happened, by the time the bus reached the man, he was still in the middle of the road.

The bus driver slowed and got it to a stop and waited for the old man to cross the road. He did not honk which was a good thing because the old man might have fainted! Once the old man crossed the road, he started again.

Now meanwhile, when the bus was stopped in the middle of the road, vehicles at the back of the bus, which couldn’t overtake because of the median, nor could see why the bus was stopped mysteriously, started honking continuously. By the time the bus started moving again, a two-wheeler whizzed past from the left, glared at the driver, showed an accusing hand at him as if the driver had committed a great sin and even mouthed some obscenities, and hurried off. I noticed the driver to see his reaction to the motorcyclist’s gestures. There was a resigned look and a hurt ego. I really felt sorry for him…

Such an irony it is that a good deed goes unnoticed and instead receives such flak. False accusations really hurt…

Thought for the day

What if you spend your whole life being devoted to God, like a priest or a sister, and then, when you finally die and go to wherever you go after you die, you find out that there is nothing really called "God" and it is just a figment of imagination created by fellow human beings?! You will surely end up being the laughing stock in the new world that you just entered and the same fellow human beings who created the figment of imagination who are already there will laugh their hearts out!!

A satirical thought, huh?

The Divine Approval

So, there I was, at home, waiting for the time to pass. Couple more hours to go. It was a big day for me. A day which could perhaps change my life drastically.

Mom came to the room then and started rambling without any preamble. I was too involved in what I was doing that I was hardly concentrating, as is always the case with sons when moms tend to ramble away to glory.

“On the day that I first met your father, we received prasadam directly from Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams. My father had sent some money to TTD couple of days previously by way of expressing gratitude for a business which had turned profitable and officials at TTD were courteous enough to send the prasadam to our house address. The prasadam which came on such a day as that when I first met your father seemed like a divine approval.

“On the day when your father and I first met your sister-in-law to ask for your brother’s proposal, we received TTD prasadam from someone in Mutt who had just been to Tirumala. There again was the divine approval.

“And today, our neighbor gave TTD prasadam. They came back from Tirumala this morning.”

I was so stunned that I asked my mom to repeat the whole thing; my concentration had perked up half-way through in her first narration. I was still dazed when she completed her second narration.

Well, well, well. Some things, as they say, are made in Heaven….