Doogie-ing

The time is 12.45 am. Its usually that time of the night when I would have just completed my first dream and getting onto the next. The only connection to the two being a regular and rhythmic snoring drone. And yet, here I am, like Doogie Howser, typing away on my laptop the thoughts that are incessantly coming to my head. As they say, for an author - if I can be so rash as to call myself one - when words come to the head, they have to be channelised onto the paper, or the e-paper.

The last couple of days have been really hectic at office. So much so that I had to skip my violin classes. Clocking more than 12 hours a day has become a daily routine. The project in which I am working since 10 months is about to go into production (the date and time of production install is the day of my marriage – how’s that for coincidence?!!) and a number of defects are being raised at the nth moment, causing the whole project to go into haywire, and along with it went our daily routine! No swimming, no sauna and none of those pleasures I was describing in my previous few blogs.

But this working long hours and on weekends, much to my surprise, did not bring any disappointment to me. I wasn’t wary of going to the office early in the morning to another hard day’s – and night’s – work. I was rather looking forward to it. I thought about it and asked myself as to why that I wasn’t repenting such hard hours in office with no personal life whatsoever.

The answer was pretty obvious. It was because I was in the project since its inception and since I was working on it for 10 months now, it was almost like my baby. And with baby, comes affection and love, and you want it – the project, in my case – to be as good as possible, defect-free! Such is the power of love, that one’s toil doesn’t really affect one’s pleasures. It is that time when you don’t think about how much you are being paid, how much it is worth it all, but you just go there and give your best, just for the sake of your project, for your baby. And at the end of a hard days work, be it a weekday or a weekend, you will feel satisfied, you will feel deserved for the money that you are being paid, you wouldn’t really think about the lost weekend or the lost time in personal life, you will be remorse and guilt free for doing your best, and that’s what counts most. To deserve what you get. And when such a thought comes, along comes satisfaction. And with satisfaction comes that happiness, which is what everyone craves for. It was quite a realization!

So, there I was, basking with this realization, when along came some relatives to the house. As is often the case with relatives, the conversation starts of with ‘How is so-and-so?’, ‘Did she-and-she come back?’, ‘Is he-and-he doing well now?’ etc. The talk is mostly on other relatives. Invariably, the conversation somehow leads to two people in our huge family tree who are suffering from some rare diseases that no doctor on earth has been able to cure. Such is the type of diseases that it will occur in 1 out of a million cases. Absolutely bed-ridden. One of them is in her early fifties. And it is said that the only cure out of this tremendous pain that they are suffering is death itself.

It’s the most heartening for me to see such people. Really rattles the heart to think that in this era of great innovations and inventions, such diseases still prevail where Man is just a onlooking passerby with his insurmountable knowledge and wisdom. Really a pity.

When topic about disease and the victim comes up, it leads to the question of ‘Why him?’ or ‘Why her?’ Then comes the long list of good deeds that the person has done in his or her life, and one really wonders, what the person really ever do to get such a treatment at the hands of Providence. As one of my elderly guest relative put it, “Is there really anything called Divine Justice?” Very true words. Food for thought indeed.

One thing I have noticed about this elderly set of people, the people who ruled the world in seventies and eighties, is that they are really very dignified. Very composed and dressed very well. Very eloquent in their conversations. Very gentlemanly and courteous and it’s a real pleasure to talk to people like that. Sort of old-world charm, one might say, but there it is. “The real juice”, as Wodehouse would have said.

Well that’s about it. Doogie would have done a better job, I guess, to surmise this whole thing into one beautiful sentence, as he always does. I liked that part in every episode. But then, he was a child prodigy…

:)

Funda of the day

I was walking in the office campus today when I overheard one guy say to the other:

"One should never join a company which has a half-page or full-page recruitment ad."

:)

A sad day for Jayanagar

Being in a place affects you in a way of its own. It becomes part of you, of your life. You depend on it with totality, with surity that as long as you are there, the place remains; with its shops, trade, restaurants and even filth. The place around you, the environment, fills up this unknown place in your heart even without you knowing it.

On Friday night at 11 pm, fire broke out in the Jayanagar Shopping Complex area and it lasted for more than 8 hours. It burned out every shop inside the complex to black rubble. Day traders' brand new sale clothes, stationery, groceries, and other exenpsive items of sale were blackened to death. These were their sole investments. The shop was their life. Their sole path of sustenance. And by Saturday morning, everything was gone. Just like that. The heart goes out to them all.

And as for the shopping complex itself, that void in the heart can be almsot felt. It was always there since I was born. In fact, 32 years now, and suddenly seeing that it was all charred out, brings out that emotion within which cannot be expressed. One sees mortality in human beings but not in places, not in markets, not in buildings, not in inanimate worldly items. They are meant to be there, forever. But then, comes this crashing thought, that Hand of Fate, that indeed, even inanimate worldly things, including buildings, places have mortality written all over them. And it is then when such mortality occurs, that one starts feeling the love, and its subsequent loss, even for landmarks such as the Jayanagar Shopping Complex.

A sad, sad day indeed...

Ironicity

Bangalore’s Electronics City hosts of many companies like Infosys, HP, Wipro, etc. The other day, when I was just about to reach the office, I happened to notice a board that was always there. But this time, the words ‘Electronics City’ at the top of the board sort of reminded me of an irony:

The only purpose served after I studied six years of electronics has been to work in Electronics City!

***

The guy from Aquaguard had come to clean the water filter today. I was interested to see what he was really going to do. So, there I was, watching him open the filter, remove the tubes, the pipes and the works. Sure enough, the filter - and all its related contents included - was all brownish-ugh! But when I saw him how he really cleaned the filter, the ironicity, if there is such a word, hit me hard:

The water filter's filter, filled with water's impurity, was actually cleaned by water itself!

***

I went to an eye clinic today for a routine check up. They checked my eye power and dilated it so as to check the nerves. Now, dilation will result in blurriness of the eyes for a couple of hours. So an ironic thought passed my mind:

I went to an eye clinic with my eyes at its supreme best, and came out of it with all blurriness!

***

Wedding shopping has begun. The search for the perfect suit was one such shopping expedition. We were browsing though the innumerable collection, deciding on texture and color when the salesman said something about color which was, in a way, very ironic:

“Blue is evergreen.”

***

:)

Little incidents...

It was good to come home to watch an IPL T20 cricket match just getting started...
It was always a good topic at lunch to talk about the status of T20 matches...
I miss it...
:-(

***

"Ma'am, when do I learn this song and raga?"
"It comes with time and practice"

"Coach, when do I learn to breathe during swimming?"
"It comes with time and practice"

:-(

***

"Harsha, can you proof-read this invitation card?"
"Yes, dad."
I start reading....more to myself than anybody else...."C Gururaja Rao and C G Susheela's grandson request the gracious presence of you and your family on the auspicious occasion of the wedding of their grandson Harsha with..."
That is when realization hits me and my eyes bulge. "Oh, my God! I am getting married?!!!"
:-)

***

Life's mistakes

Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and thats the end of you.

~Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman.

Anger

Anger, they say, is a temporary madness.

About half a decade ago, I just couldn't scold anyone. A vehicle honks and cuts in my way, I am passive. Someone jumps the queue, I am a mute spectator. I see an injustice happening and I sit mum. A colleague doesn't show professionalism in his work and I just make a ball of fist and blame the Fate. I used to blame the system, the mindset of people, India, etc and just live on.

But now, boy do I shout. I stand up for what is right. I do not see "left or right", as they say, and blast a person if I find him on the wrong side of justice. My adrenalin gets all pumped up and unprintable words start coming out of my mouth. I can almost feel the mercurial rise in temper. I do not hesitate to escalate matter. I do not hesitate to talk to anyone superior. I just rip the person apart if I find him guilty. Twice in the last couple of months I have made the other person almost stop talking during the argument because of my powerful tirade.

This phenomenal change in me is scary. Half a decade ago, this is the way I wanted to be. But now that I can indeed stand up for myself and for what is right, I am not sure if this is the right way to stand up for oneself. True, in both the cases, things got done when it seemed almost impossible to get it done, because of my wrath, and I felt the success for having not been meek and submissive but yet, surely, there must be some other way?

At the end of the conversation, I am fuming and taking a break and drinking water and trying to get back to normalcy. Jeez, I think, I was fine a few minutes ago, but what made me go off the top like that?!

Moral of the day: I am getting pissed off very easily. I need to calm myself and work on my anger. I need to put the point across in a soothing manner and still get the right job done.

Question of the day: Or am I fine the way I am, because I am able to get things done right in the right time?

Just

It is nice to discuss about the project amongst team members in a swimming pool. It really irks me when people do not carry an umbrella when its raining daily and want to share with me, making me half wet in the process. I saw this huge number of crows on the road, flying here and there, making pedestrians to stoop now and then to avoid being hit, and made me wonder why the birds do not fly above earth where there is so much space instead of crowding in an already overflowing place. Feynman really hit me hard in his Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman! when he pinpointed the absolute uselessness of the education system in which I had studied for 18 years straight. There was a faint hope after I liked Pirates of the Caribbean but Chronicles of Narnia Prince Caspian is definitely not my type. It feels good to get a salary hike howsoever infinitesimal the hike might actual be. I had seen many mind-reading reality shows but today was the first time I was in one, when a performer was invited to the company campus. I am all excited about my new found knowledge of the Katapayadi Sankhya – the formula to identify the scale of any of the 72 melakarta ragas. I realized that my ideologies and thoughts almost half a decade ago were not exactly right and it came as a surprise, how as one ages ones thoughts and actions vary. The human mind has an amazing capability to adapt to its current situation as well as to the upcoming event in life in such a way that not only do you enjoy the current situation but also be ready and anticipate the future so as to get done with the current situation, as in the cases of just finishing education, of just about to get into a company, of going to a foreign country, of going back to home, of getting engaged, of getting married and life after. Its amazing how songs that one hear correlate to a person or a group of persons with whom the song was once heard, like for me, whenever I hear Bhool Bhulayya, I am reminded of Mithu and the trip to Goa; whenever I hear Fanaa songs, I am reminded to Soumik and the trip from Chicago to Boston; whenever I hear Rang De Basanti songs, I am reminded of Mithun and Ashwini when we went to the movie and Mithun drove for 45 miles at 2 am in the night without any sense of purpose; whenever I hear of Smack That, I am reminded of Mayur who gives me any song I like; whenever I hear of Zara Zara, I am reminded of my initial days in Infy Mysore with Sandhya and others; whenever I hear of Hips dont lie, I am reminded of Abhi and Archie in whose house we saw the video; whenever I hear of ….well, the list goes on. I think I will stop now.

The Deflation

There are days when one is flying like a balloon
Full of josh and enthusiasm
Of liveliness and gaiety
Brimful of life and color

And then comes this one small statement
Which is indeed full of truth
But feels like the prick of a needle
And thus starts the deflation

No more the flying; no more the josh and liveliness.
Balloon is out of air
And it lies on the floor
Just a piece of shrunk rubber

People's expectations

You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. Its their mistake, not my failing. I am what I am, and if they expected me to be good and they're offering me some money for it, it's their hard luck.

-Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman

A stinker of a day

Some days just rot. It is almost tangible from the start. And once it starts, Fate plays along with you all the way till the end, mocking at your absolute helplessness…

Like how you get up late on a time crunched day…
Like how you have to miss the morning jog because you got up late…
Like how you miss your usual bus in the morning…
Like how you get a seat which is splashed with bright sunlight all through the journey to office…
Like how you cannot sleep in the bus as you usually do because you are actually sweating in the morning…
Like how you get stuck in a long line of security check and swipe in queue…
Like how you see a cycle being whisked away by someone else when you just thought you could get to it…
Like how the elevator door closes on your face as you desperately press the button…
Like how you are loaded and loaded with work all through the day and it just keeps on coming…
Like how you have to miss the evening swim and sauna because of work…
Like how you miss your stop on your way back in bus because you overslept…
Like how you have to still honor a prior appointment but it is raining…

Boy. What a stinker of a day…

Its Hot! Its Cold!

Commencing Shower.
Its hot!

Swimming pool.
Its cold!

Jacuzzi.
Its hot!

Rain.
Its cold!

Sauna and steam bath.
Its hot!

Final Shower.
Its cold!

fia...

Extract from Collins Gem English Dictionary Copyright 1990.
Order of words is slightly amusing.

...
fiance : man engaged to be married
fiancee : woman engaged to be married
fiasco : total failure
...

:)

Just a matter of few seconds, actually

I witnessed 3 incidents in succession to realize that Man cannot even wait for a few seconds.

Incident # 1: Vehicles were bumper-to-bumper. It was a huge traffic jam and vehicles could be seen moving inch by inch for almost a kilometer ahead. I saw a local worker carrying a huge load on his shoulder trying to cross the road. But none of the vehicles were stopping to allow him to cross the road. In spite of the fact that there was no more than 3 feet to move on the road for the vehicle. If only they could just wait for a few seconds…

Incident # 2: The signal was red. The countdown was in single digits. By the time the number had come down to 5, vehicles could be seen honking, moving as if by pressure, like how the liquid wants to come out of a soda bottle. One feels like shouting ‘JUST SHUT UP! ALL OF YOU!!’ If only they could just wait for a few seconds…

Incident # 3: Vehicles that get stuck behind a BMTC bus or a company bus usually have to wait till the bus off-loads or loads passengers. But hardly does anyone wait. Either they honk and keep honking or they keep honking and try to cross the bus by moving onto another lane. If latter is followed, they will not only be unsuccessful but also block other vehicles moving freely in that other lane resulting in more honks. When all this brouhaha is in progress, that BMTC bus or the company bus will start moving and for a minute or two, there will be no shrill honks until another such bus stops at the same place! If only they could just wait for a few seconds…

And then, one fine day, when Preetham and I were walking back to the office, in the middle of another of our intellectual conversations or simple ‘babe talk’ (!), we entered the elevator and I pressed the floor button. Immediately later, out of habit, I pressed the button which closes the door. And Preetham said:

“Do you realize, Harsha, that Man cannot wait for even a few seconds that he invented a button on the elevator to close the door sooner than the time it would have taken to close automatically? Just a matter of few seconds, actually.”

:)

Chinnaswamy and I

March 18 2001

The time was 3 am. I woke up groggily. Brushed my teeth, left the house, closing the door softly behind me, took the bike and made my way to Chinnaswamy stadium. It was a chilly night and I knew it was going to be a long wait. The ticket counter was going to open only at 8 am. The match was India Vs Australia scheduled a week later. When I neared M G Road, my heart sank. The queue had started from Rs 100 counter way way ahead and had already neared St marks Road. Also, it wasn’t in single file. It was more like a kilometer long set of rows and each row consisting of 3-4 people. Nevertheless, I parked my Kinetic and joined the queue. Fortunately I had a Robin Cook novel with me to pass the time till the counters opened. Everyone was sitting on the pavement beside the gutter and I too did the same. Its much too painful to stand all those hours. I was amazed at people’s passion for the game. Most folks would have stood in the queue from previous night. Only that could explain such a long queue at 3 am. The guy in front of me had his shirt torn. I was wondering how he could afford to spend 100 bucks on a cricket match while he couldn’t afford a shirt. Is that how the passion is for this game? But then I could be mistaken. Most folks get the ticket and sell it in black on the day of the game. Perhaps this guy standing in queue is just his means of earning money and ensuring to get rid of that torn shirt. Strange are the ways of this world. In spite of studying people around me, I was able to complete the novel by 9 am and I hadn’t moved an inch. It wasn’t too difficult to understand what was happening. While we all stood in the queue religiously, the counters had opened at 8 am and new people were just jumping the queue and joining near the counter itself instead of coming in line. Also, some who had come after me and were standing behind me also jumped the queue by joining ahead despite brawl and foul language all around. But I stood ground with high-but-waning hopes that I will get gallery ticket. At 10, with no breakfast and nothing whatsoever to eat, I started getting a headache and felt like puking. I thought enough is enough, and went to my bike and started my way back to home. I never realized it was so tough to get a ticket to a cricket match. I passed through the Rs 100 counter and could see how jam packed the queue was. No wonder why the queue was never moving. I then passed the Rs 500 counter. About 10 people were standing in the queue, and it was oh-so-easy to get the ticket but it was beyond my budget. I couldn’t afford Rs 500 for a cricket match. That day, I told myself ‘Next time, I will take a Rs 500 ticket...’

Sep 29 2007

Passion remained as it is. But laziness grew with pay packets. The match was scheduled to start at 2.30 pm. It was again India Vs Australia. I hadn’t stood in the queue this time a week ago. Nor could the ticket be obtained over internet. But I went by myself to the stadium at 12 noon just to soak in the atmosphere. I saw some guy selling tickets in black, shadily. My budget was Rs 3000 this time, 30 times more than my budget 6 years ago. He was selling at Rs 200 ticket for Rs 1500. I smiled at Heaven and took it without hesitation. I entered the stadium to a rising crescendo. This is what its all about. A television set just dilutes it all. To sit in a stadium, in an arena filled with thousands of other people, to watch thirteen men on the ground, two of them battling out the rest eleven. It is an honor to stand on that pitch. It is just the tops to get a standing ovation from thousands of people for performing well in the midst of such a humongous gathering where the expectation and pressure will always be exponentially increasing. This is what heroes are made of. True, the match got abandoned due to rain midway through. True, Sachin got out for a duck. But I enjoyed it thoroughly.

May 5 2008

‘I have an extra ticket. Wanna come?’ A colleague asked me at 10 am. The T20 match was at 8 pm. I said yes. This one was just Rs 235. We reached the stadium at 5. Again that crescendo. It is painful to sit in a gallery because there are no seats and it is just a set of concrete steps but it is in gallery that there is much fun, much brotherhood, full of lively people and here is where the Mexican Wave starts, where creativity oozes and the party never ends. However this time around it was even wonderful. T20 comes with music, loud, blaring music and jaw-dropping cheerleaders and music performances and dance sequences and, to top it off, there was also laser show with Mission Impossible theme music. It was rupees’ worth even before the match started. Of course, the match Bangalore Vs Mohali was a disappointment as Bangalore practically lost in the first over but nevertheless the cheerleaders really gave a reason to cheer especially because they were right in front of us! When match got real boring as Bangalore were sure to lose, people stopped watching the cricket and started conversing with the cheerleaders! Its true that its no longer a gentleman’s game, but then the aura of a cricket stadium just got bigger and better as it reduced from a day long affair to compete with a 3 hour Bollywood flick, enjoyable by everyone in the family.

Booklog Enhanced!

Since almost an year I had this urge to let the World know what book I was reading. I guess this is a common feeling amongst book lovers. Hence I came up with the Booklog link on the right which primarily used the publish option of googledocs to portray the books I have read in a HTML format. But the UI was ghastly while the content, for me, mattered most. Above all, the biggest disadvantage was that I still could not showcase the much publicised 'Current Read' which in fact I was tracking locally since 2001...

Simple and easy solution was to come up with a blogspot link of its own (which will henceforth have 'Current Read') and from there, navigate to the Googledocs link (which contains the master list of books read along with the rating I provide).

Happy Birthday, Chronicle!

Catch line of the day!

You know, the more I see of women, the more I think that there ought to be a law. Something has got to be done about this sex, or the whole fabric of Society will collapse, and then what silly asses we shall all look.

:)

The Code of the Woosters by P G Wodehouse

The Mind

How does the mind work? In a recent preaching that I attended, it was told that the mind is a computer that God invented, and instead of using that computer to the fullest, we use an external computer and worry about its well-being. That may be so, but it still is fascinating how those grey cells work up there!

One of my previous posts was named Random. The other day, I was eating Idly-wada in a fast food with 1 bowl of chutney and 2 bowls of sambar. The mind was processing randomly and I was dipping idly and wada, one after the other, in one of those 3 bowls in no particular order. The hand was just going from one bowl to the other, sometimes using logic (the preferred bowl had more content than the other 2) but most times with no real logic. It sort of reminded me of a function commonly called random() which many software languages support. Perhaps the mind too has this kind of a function!

The other day, I was seeing a TV show called The Mentalist on AXN. The host of the show, I forgot his name, was an ace in reading people’s minds. And not just that, he was making one person from the audience to read another person in the audience’s mind as well! It really was mind blowing in fact. The icing was when he got onto the stage a single (marital-ly speaking) girl and asked all single guys to stand up. The girl was asked to choose one among those single guys standing and mentally think about his features like hair, height, build, etc. She was asked to choose the one whom she felt most attracted to. Once this was done, she was asked to face the Mentalist while he started reading her mind. He knocked off the single guys one by one by asking them gracefully to ‘Please take your seat’ and finally chose one guy and asked him to come and stand behind her. This the guy did and when the girl was asked to turn around, she was stunned to see that the guy whom she had mentally selected was the one standing in front of her. The guy and the girl hugged one another and one does not know what happened next but it was nice to hear when the Mentalist said, “What other shows take weeks to achieve, we did it in 3 minutes!”

It really is quite a thing, our mind! The more fuel you add to it, the more it stores! There really is no end to the amount of storage capacity that it has, if we really test it out. Like in olden days, we used to memorize so many of our friends and relatives telephone numbers. But with the advent of mobile phones which act as a telephone diary as well, hardly any number is memorized.

The same with the calculator. Even when a simple math is done in the mind, to double check the mind’s efficiency, either the mobile phone’s calculator is used or a physical calculator or the calculator on the computer. Or worse, the simple math is done on either of those without even using the mind!

So what does this mean? While the technology has eased Man in using his brains, it also has made Man lazy and incompetent enough to think. And ‘thinking’ was what Man was credited for in the first place, when compared to animals. Which brings to the point:

Has technology which was invented primarily due to Man’s intelligence now making Man less intelligent? Are we humans, who are said to have evolved from animals, evolving back into animals again?!

But then thats just a negative way of thinking. For Man continues to churn out one new technology after the other. Couple of decades ago, a 1 GB hard disk had to be carried in an airplane. Now it can be kept in a wallet. While the earlier man thought of fossil fuels for energy generation, the later years saw solar cells to generate energy using Solar energy. The current man is now thinking of going one step ahead with artifical photosynthesis and electricity generation.

The mobile phones are getting shorter and smarter. Communication from one place to another has become as easy as learning A,B,C. Mode and speed of transportation is changing gears so often that the day is not far when package trips to Moon are organised with add-ons of nearby planets! The slimness of the Television and laptops is remarkable. The mobile banking and shopping has made life even more safer and easier. And so on and so forth.

Technology is growing at such a rapid pace that although lives are getting easier, the only thing thats getting tougher is to be continuously abreast and aware of the technology thats now surrounding us!

Theory of Relativity

Of late, I am noticing small things in day-to-day life which when seen in one perspective seem so ordinary. But then suddenly I see it in a totally different perspective, and the whole thing transforms into an absorbing observation.

***

Example 1: The automated doors (opens and closes without manual intervention) of an elevator.

Perspective 1: The door closes and opens all by itself when a person enters on one floor and leaves the elevator on another floor.

Perspective 2: An elevator basically needs 2 automated doors at any point of time to function. It is actually a set of doors that are opening and closing simultaneously. One is the door on the floor and one is the elevator door itself. So while the floor door just opens and closes, the elevator door travels along with the person and opens and closes in tandem with the subsequent floor door.

Perspective difference: While in former, it seemed the whole event needed only one set of doors, in reality, it had taken 3 set of doors (the floor door in which the person entered, the elevator door and the floor door in which the person departed).

Quite fascinating.

***

Example 2: Billing by a service representative in a retail shop for a long queue of customers.

Perspective 1: Customer C sees two other customers (A,B) in front and 2 other customers (D,E) behind. When the C’s turn comes up, the service representative picks each item, scans it and moves it onto the conveyor to be ultimately put in a cart. When its all done, he tells the amount to be paid, collects the amount and says ‘Thank You! Have a nice day!’ For all practical purposes, C thinks that once billing for D and E is done, the rep is pretty much done with his task.

Perspective 2: If one stands beside the service rep, one can see the rep repeating the same thing over and over again to a never-ending queue of customers. By the time C is at the counter, customers F and G have added onto the queue. By the time G is serviced, H and I have added onto the queue. By the time I is serviced, J and K have added onto the queue, and so it goes on and on. The items keep coming and coming in a never ending flow, much like going on a cruise where the Earth’s horizon is always there but never unreachable.

Perspective difference: While in former, to any current customer it seemed the rep serviced just 3-5 customers (customers in horizon), in reality, it’s a whole gamut of customers for the duration of the rep’s hours at the counter.

Quite intriguing.

***

Example 3: The common example of two vehicles moving at the same speed.

Perspective 1: Two passengers in two respective vehicles (which are moving at the same speed) would feel that they are immobile if they stare at one another.

Perspective 2: To a pedestrian, the scene comprises of two vehicles which are very much mobile (and containing two respective passengers).

Perspective difference: While in former, there seemed an element of immobility in the scene depicted, in reality, it was a completely mobile setting.

Quite captivating.

***

Random

Its been hectic, hectic days at office. At least, compared to what it was couple of months ago. Speaking of office, 2 colleagues quit within a span of a week. Its quite saddening, but I have got used to this routine of once-in-a-month event. That final look and smile you share with one another knowing pretty well the odds that you will not meet the person ever again in your life. The nostalgia of all those good moments spent together come flooding back in moments such as those and you can but just smile and bid adieu.

Among the two who quit, one quit joining another company and another quit to join MBA. I myself did not pursue higher studies after my graduation, and that perhaps is the reason why I am in always awe of people who do their Masters. But the real sad thing I see nowadays is that even some Masters candidate is pretty much doing the same thing as what I am doing, which is being a software professional, although they haven’t done their Masters in anything related to Computers! Now that’s really a shame. I really would like to see people who have done their Masters to join a profession which will give credit to their field of study, and excel in that occupation instead of joining the bandwagon of software professionals.

Well, nothing great about me either, which I think is why I feel so. Me, coming from an Electronic background joined an industry which really does not give credit to my education. I really feel that it’s a lot of waste of time. But the past is the past and one has to get on with the flow.

In a mindset like this the info about Harish Hande came as a whiff of fresh air. He did his Energy Engineering in IIT, then Masters, then PHD and finally opened a company called SELCO which has the main objective of supplying electricity to the rural India which in itself is a noble cause. A perfect education fuelling a social obligation. What else can one do better in life than bettering millions of others’ lives. I had the pleasure of hearing him out in our company campus where he was invited as a guest to speak on his company. He started off saying ‘I was surprised to know that Infosys has 6 entrance gates. My office has about 6 doors’ or something to that effect!

Well, to each his own. Everybody works at one point of time or the other. Some for themselves and some for others. For some, it is just a daily space and time filler, to be occupied by mundane activities in an AC room instead of whiling away at home under the fan. And for some it is a sort of commerce wherein the member belongs to a class of public service.

I remember one incident when I was on my way to Chippagiri from Manthralaya. We were going in an APSRTC bus when the driver suddenly stopped and said something in Telugu over his back towards the lady conductor. Apparently the squad had stopped the bus and couple of officers boarded the bus. One started asking customers for the ticket and the other took notes from the conductor’s tickets. At the end of about half hour, the conductor was crying. Her heart was filled with extreme desperation. She didn’t seem to be the type who would cheat the Government by taking money from passengers but not giving them tickets. Perhaps she didn’t yet have time to give tickets to all who had boarded and who were at the back of the bus. But the officer seemed to be a very strict no-nonsense kind of guy who didn’t agree with her when she said the passengers who didn’t have ticket had just got on the bus.

Imagine that. I mean, a bus filled with anywhere from 50 to 70 passengers with varying pickup points and varying destinations and the conductor, a lady conductor, has to walk all the way till the end of a crowded bus to give tickets to all kinds of egoistic male morons, some of who consider it a joy to see her in tears. And she was penalized, asked to sign a paper in front of all 70 of us that she was not performing her duty. My heart went out to her. Whether she was performing her duty to the best of her ability, I did not know, but the whole scene was just too depressing. To think what will happen to her salary was just beyond me. Obviously the process has to be corrected of issuing tickets, of the way people board the bus, to standardize it and ensure it is cheat-less, instead of blaming the person responsible.

We too have audits in our office. Audits are informed about a day in advance such that we have sufficient time to clean our defiled history, make proper documentation and ensure all is in place. Some of them just don’t bother because the salary is not directly proportional if not majorly impacted by the audit. What a huge difference in scenario although the underlying topic is the same…

When we finally reached Chippagiri, a small village famed after the great saint Vijayadasa’s temple, I saw a family consisting of a husband, wife, their small kid child and the hubby’s parents. They had come for the child’s Aksharabhyaasa, the auspicious occasion marking the child’s start of education. My initial impression was that the family was from a nearby town and this temple was the place of worship for all their family’s celebrations.

The family seemed very respectable and very cultured. The husband was enchanting. He sang slokas from his heart in a soulful tune. He sang devotional songs in a wonderful passion. His wife joined him in chorus. Overall the family seemed extremely religious and very much in touch with the Vedas and spirituality. He sang more songs during lunch time and by now, pretty much everyone in the temple noticed the whole family and started flocking them to know more about their whereabouts and how cultured they were. They wanted to know where he was working, staying, etc.

It came as quite shock to me when he said that he was working in Ebay in California, USA. Especially because I had marked them as a local family from a nearby town. Apparently such activities as sloka-chanting, voice conferenced pravachanas, devotional songs, etc are very much active near his house in US. So much so that it is not so much in India! It was really a culture shock that an Indian in US had retained so much of traditional family customs and traditions that he had come all the way to Chippagiri for his son’s Aksharabhyaasa! It truly was mind boggling.

But then this is an era when it no longer comes as a surprise when you hear Mr X or Ms Y shuttling between US, or any other country for that matter, and India. People have started frequenting other countries so regularly that they wouldn’t have visited parts of their own city in India in the same fashion. Like a guy from Bangalore would have visited The White House in US twice within a year with his friends and again 6 months later with his wife but would not have seen resplendent Vidhana Soudha or the beautiful Sankey Tank in the same time frame!

Another thing to note about that guy in Chippagiri was his absolute devotion. I am kind of a mediocre guy and although I visit lot of religious places, I have my own perceptions of God and the Infinite, of devotion and of aloofness, of theism and atheism. I am neither here nor there, but yeah, I am somewhere!! But I read 2 interesting posts recently. Of course, no comments for both of them as I am in DMZ, so to speak, but yes, they were very interesting. One said that the concept of God is one of the biggest jokes ever told and the other said atheists don’t exist. The two blogs which I read within a span of few days of one another in itself was quite a thing!

Well, I think I will log off now. Sleepy.