2009

After 25 years of life, I learned what I am all about.

I learned what I can do, which I possibly never imagined I could.


2009 was a wonderful year.
It made me sweat like never before,
It made me burn like never before,
It inflicted the most painful wound of my life.

But that was it.

2009 was a wonderful year.
It made me bury away old memories.
It resurrected me.
It gave back so many little things, which others call trivial, to my life.

And the best thing I did in 2009 -
Started learning violin, my best investment of 2009.

And the worst thing I did in 2009 - who wants to remember them???

Neelambari

Neelambari means blue eyed living in the blue sky.
But I am not concerned of the blue eyes.
I am concerned of my eyes. They are not closing.
A thousand memories flooding in.
A thousand different sounds shouting in my ears.
I want to sleep. And I want to sleep deep!

Neelambari is a raga(a ordinal combination of musical notes) in carnatic music (a genre of classical music found in southern part of India). Neelambari is a slow paced, lullaby raga. Empirically it has been proved that there are some therapeutic properties which induces sleep if this raga is sung. The science behind this is simple (not that simple); a pacifying raga like Neelambari cools down the hypothalamus and tricks it into peaceful state thus preventing it from sending all-chaos-panic signals.

I love to sleep. so needless to say I love Neelambari, infact it is my favourite raga and most of the songs i like also belong to this raga.

Just like sleep inducing ragas, there are sleep eliciting ragas - example Madhyamavathi takes one to a higher conscious state. At present, I believe somebody is singing a song in Madhyamavathi to present me with a night-out. The only song i listened to today was gum sum gum sum - From Paa and if i am correct I believe its from Kaapi raga and Kaapi's specialty is that it takes the whole of one's attention and makes you tied to it.

In order to sleep, I have two options left:
1. Take a text book and read - I might doze off. The probablity this combine event happening that : going to search for a book, selecting a book, reading a book and then sleeping - is very very grim

or

2. Listen to a song in Neelambari

And I am going to choose the latter :)

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PS: I started of writing this post thinking Neelambari means blue eyed but Bhavya informed me the correct meaning. Thanks Bhavya. And sorry for the confusion

A filmy letter
Dear G,

Once I loved you.

I loved you more than anything. But then, I didn’t know it was love. And later, when I knew it was love.You were not there.

And now I know you will never be anymore there.

Like letters written on sand …. washed away after the wave resides back, …only traces of you are left and over the next few waves even those will be washed away.

How so much I try to hold those sands of memory in my hand, I know they will ease out and in the end what is left are those smooth dust….a coarse…. and over the times, I know I will wash away them too.

And when I write this, I already have lost some grip of the sand that I was having in my hand. Just waiting for that final rain. Glistening drops will then wash away all those that was once everything of my life - you.

Memories stay. Linger around the border and then disappear to invisibility.

Some come back. ….And some never.

I promise you will never come back….. And I know you are happy that way.
And that’s all I care – your happiness.

Warm Regards,
B

NB: An alternative twist to a filmy love story. I would love if Mani Ratnam make this a movie :)

Record broken.

“It says you had hemoptysis, is it true?” He asked with a surprise after seeing me

“If it says that then it must be true. ..by the way what is hemoptysis ?” I asked. It was in the reference medical record, the doctor from other room had sent in, for an expert comment here.

“Oh! ….Vomiting blood.” Said the expert without the light mood I tried to create.

“And it also says you vomited around half a glass?” Expert was now coming to his expertise mode.

“Depends on with what glass you are measuring.” I retorted back.

“If it was a filter-coffee glass – then it was around half else if the glass is of the standard fruit juice mug then I would say a little less than the quarter. But if you were taking any non-tropical fruit juice then….”

“Ok..ok I get it.” Expert was getting impatient.

“Was it fresh blood? “– Expert was not going to leave any stone unturned.

“Since it came from my mouth, I guess it should be fresh”. What a stupid question – I thought.

“No…that’s not what I meant. Was it black?” - Another idiotic-expert question.

“Duh….no it was red – pure wine red, Doctor don’t take them serious I am just another normal guy.” I commented at my friends who always thought I was a bit tad abnormal.

“I understood that by now.” Expert was now taking sides.

“Umm….so whats my problem ?” – I wanted to sound normal.

I don’t see anything…all tests are normal. Expert had made his decision.

“Thank you doctor, see you then.” I was ready to run amok.

“No..Not so fast, since you came and hemoptysis being serious issue we would like to put you under observation” – who the heck said he was an expert!!!

“But I have never been admitted in a hospital, and I don’t want my record to be broken, I promise I would take all the pills that you prescribe. But please please don’t admit” – I was literally on my knees.

He smiled.

Whosever said India is a free country is dead wrong. Where was my right to freedom when I was admitted against my wish? I was given a bed with white-mental-patient attire to wear. Now it is perfect, my friends told – just another psycho treating for some weird psychotic disorder.

But the worst part was yet to come – on my left side, there was a guy admitted for insomnia –INSOMNIA!! Who admits somebody for that? And on my right was a guy who had a surgery in his eye that evening because he forgot to remove his glasses while playing cricket in his hostel corridor and who always said “who is there?” for every sound he heard. For rest of 2 nights I couldn’t sleep because insomniac didn’t want to put off the light and in the day time, I couldnt shut my eyes because of the constant begging from the blind guy.

Salvation

Is salvation achievable through divinity only?
Or any work done with divinity achieve salvation ?

The program has been running for last 4hrs - using around 20522108 Kb memory and average of 25%CPU and the most important point - its 3 in the morning and i dont know whether its actually working.

I simply do not want to kill it. I do not want to sleep too. I want to see what happens in the end. If and all there is an end.Parallelism is that in life also you dont know what is happening, but you dont leave it there. You live till the end, just to see what will happen.

I checked. Nobody is logged in. They must be dreaming. About? sure about tomorrow.
The model generated on the training data is around 8 GB - so much of data and out of that if somebody had asked me how much i would have created using my "brain" : not even 1 MB.

you know only a little ;vast amount of the rest is unknown. And you have got only one life. Before i salvage myself will i know everything? may be not. How did a machine: man made, find out several times what its inventor couldnt; even though what they knew were all the same!

How do you shutdown a server? killing just my program or a blinking failure message is heart searing act. Server crashed- a lie that can be far from truth. But does it serve the purpose?

Having a purpose in what he does. would that lead to salvation?

Is that the answer Thyagaraja was looking for through this keerthana?

Black Swan.

Thick friends- thats how they defined three of us.
We came from different parts of country, spoke different languages, had different cultures and were totally different in all sense. I was an introvert, one was an extrovert and sometimes moody and other was an over-extrovert and all non-sense guy.

But somewhere in between there was thread that held us together. And over the years it tightened.

When we bunked the classes we did it together, when we proposed we did together, when we did our internship we did together. 4 years how it passed away, nobody knew. But one thing they all knew was that - we were thick friends.

Final year, we were in Goa. we were there for weeks- a summer internship they called, but the last bash in the college we said. During every evening we went around vasco town and then sober-less nights with full throttle on NFS. Boyish, i would call. During the morning we roamed around the beaches and as usual we bunked after the signing the muster at the software firm.And they said we were too thick.

On final day of the college, I was the last one to go. I was there in that crowded station sending them off. We didnt cry, we came to that city as boys but were going as men. And men dont cry, so they said. But while the train was on the move we said at the top our tongue - "next December in Goa". Before the train went invisible in the horizon, i saw the thumbs up sign.

While in office, there were innumerous forwards, daily there were conference calls and in night online games. But over the time call became a usual 'Hello! how are you' , then email-forwards stopped. And before i realized we were in different continents.

Its been 5 years since that train left the station, and December is here.
Will we meet in Goa ?

I was thinking of doing something weird........ really weird.
And i have been thinking about this for quite sometime.
All pranks that i did, thought off , planned with others :-came to my mind.

Yes I was naughty.

Sometimes i press the up and down button of the elevator - even if i am not going anywhere in it.
I like to imagine the frustrated looks of the people inside, when it stops in some random floor they didnt even think off. hah! i am blessed!!!!

From the array of cycle stacked jam packed like we-are-friends-forever, in the wee hours i just take a random one of its place and place it in one obscure corner. This is like my first exercise of the day. Every now and then you can see a "lost a cycle" note on the hostel clip board - only to be found that evening by the security just few paces away from where the guy had left yesterday. :D:D!!!!

People gets so irritated for silly things, to the amusement of everybod, like registering in a matrimonial site with your boss's email id - my ex boss still doesnt have a clue why he is been bombarded with "you got a match" mails from Bharatmatrimony daily- my sweet revenge for not letting me go for the weekend movie :D

Leaving behind the long queue and getting on to the front of the ticket counter -as if nobody existed behind you and still hearing no uproar from behind, as hey!! he is just a kid! Those bunked classes during the evening were the most productive :P

Playing in the rain in those white uniform, which my mother always told me to take extra care. I miss dirtying those white canvas shoes in the football matches during 3 minutes break time between periods. Maaannnn those were the matches....

Blessed were those days you could get into the class 10 mins late and forced to sit in the first bench in the girls row. Now only thing left is the no-nonsense attitude and work ethics of professional lecture from your boss, even if you are 2 min late. Phew!!! - growing up is so overrated.

A conversation…

“I feel tired, a lot of pressure from the top.” My dad complained.

I had called him to have chit-o-chat on the way to my lab and usually my dad is always in light mood. But today was different.

“I feel like quitting”, he sounded disappointed.

“Then do it”. He wouldn’t have expected this from me.

“…And come stay with you over there?” .now he was coming down to usual mood.

“Why not? , I could get a quarters inside the campus” I questioned him back.

“Is it possible ?” Now he was really poking me.

“ ya if I get married, I would be eligible for one ….or it doesn’t matter I can rent an apartment outside”. I played along.

“you getting married?”. My dad was back into action.

“why not ?..” I was curious to know.

“Now a days they don’t have a arranged marriage system here and moreover you don’t have a girlfriend to hope for.” he was digging deep.

“I did have….” I protested.

“But you left her…” he said.

“I had constraints dad “. I retorted back.

“You didn’t have any, in my days I left many because I had so called constraints” he quoted.

“I had a career to go after…” This was getting on to serious mode now.

“Couldn’t the career and love gone together?”. he was not going to leave it.

“Could have….and I realize it now. But then life doesn’t have a retake. I learned it the hard way…Surely I do regret. But can anything be done now? “. I had stopped walking.

“ya …you could …just go after the next girl you see in front” . He was again my cool, hippy dad.

“What???..” . I was laughing out loud.

I started walking again.

Alone.

31:159.9 Sie

The library was not empty on that Saturday morning. The timing had been extended to 1:00 AM, said a notice on the sidewall to entrance. There were numerous bags and umbrellas lying on the shacks. Security dint allow them to be inside. It was a rule, one he tried so many times to break, but couldn't. He kept the bag in the rack and took his note-taking diary.

He knew what he wanted. It was a book on statistics and he knew the accession number as well as its location number. 31:159.9 Sie. But as this location number was not his turf he had to confirm before going for the search.Usually staff were less on Saturdays. The girl behind the counter was new, he hadnt seen her before.

Good Morning, Can you tell me where 31.1591.9 is ? he asked in a mild tone.
Its behind the reference section, ground floor. she said without even looking at him.
Thank you - he had long decided to be polite to the world which didnt deserve it.

The section behind reference section was the place where all grandpa books sat, it smelled of old dust. Touched and savored by many, most of the books were senile and on their death bed. There were lines of racks extending throughout that long hall. Once they had lot of spaces in between them, But now time and knowledge forced them to be more closer. He started looking for rack 31.There was 29, 30, 32,33....but no location number with 31. He was behind the schedule and wanted to complete a part very urgently. key to which lay in some pages of 31.1591.9 sie.

Sorry, but i cant find rack 31. Can you help me please?. He said to the lady at counter.
After a killing stare, she said: Its there only, you should look carefully.
He missed the usual old librarian, she was very sweet and helping.
He walked back to hall and started searching again. After half an hour of unsuccessful search he went back disdainfully.




It was raining heavily. Two days had passed after the unfaithful tryst. He was groping in the darkness, without 31.1591.9 sie he was not able move forward. Once again he went on his hunt for 31.1591.9 sie.

He was relieved to see the old librarian, sitting with her huge specs and looking at some random issue cards. She smiled at him. He had long noticed ago this, she smiled at everybody. May be world still believed in respect, he thought.

I am not able to find this book - 31.1591.9 sie, he said.
Oh , thats behind the reference section. She came with me to reference section.
Like an adroit swiming in her lanes, she meandered through the racks. After some time, the easeness was lost. She too was like me, confused.

Where is this , it should be somewhere here. she kept saying.
Lets ask Hariram, she said with a disappointment.

Hariram was the oldest serving helper of the library. They saw him in the corner, laggardly chewing the beetle. He just glanced at the piece of paper he showed him. And Like a robot, started walking towards rack 301. Towards the middle, on the lower rack he showed him that precious beauty he was searching for - 31.1591.9 sie, Accession No:18831.

The book was old and was once used very frequently and carelessly.
What is it about?. She took the book from him and started glancing around.

First published in 1960 and last issued in 1984, the year he was born.
But you are not a Psychology student - she exclaimed.
The book deals with statistics and psychology, its one of the latest holy grail of Computer science. He said with a smile, looking at the other books in that column.

Somebody from the main desk called for the librarian and she walked back with the book in her hand. Hariram had long gone to his cozy enclave.

And he was still standing there, gleaming at the other books he could reach for.

Matheran Trek

5 in the morning. And I was still awake in my bed.

That’s when, from the remotest corner, I heard that. Go to Matheran.

Matheran is a hill station, about 60 km away from Mumbai. One of the best things about this place is its red soil. Discovered by British and used by them during the dry summers during the pre-independent era as a summer vacation home, it is one of the finest trekking hot spot in Maharashtra.

Since all of my friends were busy dreaming, I thought why not make this trip all alone. And so I packed my backpack and hit on the road in no time.

My immediate destination after getting down at a station called Karjat was Borgaon, a village on the foothills of Matheran. There are 8 known trekking path to Matheran, and one through the Borgaon was the most picturesque and little steeper than the rest.


There was slight drizzle when I started the ascend; it was almost 10 km trek along the hill. Being alone has its own advantage, there is nobody to slow you or pace you up. The trail was a beaten one, I guess it was regularly used by the villagers.

The climb was little unique , I felt like walking along the spine of large dinosaur. On either side of ridge, there was nothing to hold on if I had slipped. But the view – it was fantastical.

About a Km ahead I could see a group of people ascending the hill, I was wondering how they could climb that steep. They must have lost their way, I thought. After walking for another hour I realized I was wrong. It was a small stream and I was climbing it ….straight up.




There was an instance during where I doubted my steps. My shoes was not a proper trekking one, wee hours I had didn’t fore think this part. I did slip before reaching summit; luckily I got hold of a branch before falling down….felt very good, cheating death.

Matheran is basically a plateau and there are different tourist spot there itself. The place I came to was called one tree point. It was called so, because on ascend to summit, where except for a tree, there is nothing.

Apart from the climb, it was just another tourist hot spot. The same old malign commercial web was crawling around. Before the sun went home, I took my descend. This time it was more fun. I took the road, off course walking.

It was a winding road for almost 10 Km, and as I didn’t have had the patience to take all the hare pins I slipped through cross road thinking it was a short cut. I soon realized I had lost my way. It was getting dark and there was some kind of trail and I just followed them blindly. After about an hour and a half I reached a place called Narul. And from there I took a train back.
At around 10 in the night, I was back in the campus.

Google and Me

Google. I have realized that I cannot live without it.

Not a single day goes without going to this site. In fact I believe I access this very site every 10 minutes of my present day life. What I search ? Pretty much everything. News, articles, blogs, and anything interesting and anything that I didn’t know.

I remember the first time when I searched in Google – it was darn slow. Though don’t remember what that search was for. Although I guess it was for porn :P

But I do remember what the last search was for – conversational maxims. And today was the day in which I had used it to the limit – every other word in the article I am reading is new, who coins the word like conversational implicature, systemicity and compositionality. Thanks to Brin and Page for giving Google, she, (yap it’s a female), had the answer for everything (muah!!).

I sometimes thing why not have a Google API infused into our brain, at least we can stop using our eyes to track the result of the search. Yes, I know my daughter, ya it will be a daughter, will be using the same.

Sometime back, I had dedicated one day entirely to Google – know all-about-Google day. And it was then I learned about Stanford story, the first data store, the page rank , the HITS ,teleport vector, rank convergence, the crawling , the SEO industry, Ad sense and almost everything related to Google and just today about Caffeine too . I realized that it’s like a giant spider which had data about everybody on this planet. Just imagine a day when Google just crashes. It would be worse than a 1000 catastrophe hitting the mankind together.

After writing the above line, I just wonder, should we allow this? I say NO!. I don’t want to be a slave of anybody. This is what I would call a digital slavery. A technical blasphemy that is slowly killing mankind’s ability to think in a comprehensive pragmatic manner with patience. It’s nothing but making the whole world follow a pattern subjecting to dictation of a chosen few. We are at mercy of a mammoth machine to know what we want. And god knows whether it’s really showing us everything that we need.

I forgot the last time I took a book to find the word that I needed to find. Earlier when I look for a word I used to find another 10 words adjacent to it in a dictionary. Now the did you mean………. is just killing my vocabulary.

I need to stop. And so I have decided to stop using Google (for a day :)), starting from now.

So the word was conversational maxims….where the heck is index for this book!!!!

pic curtsy: http://www.ecofriendlyinternship.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/evil-google-logo.jpg

No name.

Kasargod, a small town in north Kerala, was my destination. And I wanted to be there at exactly in between 4 and 5. PM. In theory, the light during that time is the best: it’s soft, dense and so full of life. I wished for one more thing; to have a rain while I was there. So my overall wish was to see Bekal fort in the evening with a slight drizzle.

And if the dream was realized, I promised myself photos which captured my caption – loneliness and me.

I was not alone. But then there was nobody with me also.

And nuisance of English language is that even though pragmatics allowed many words that I could coin out, semantics restated that it would be just lonely.

As soon I stepped into the fort, it started drizzling, as if welcoming me.

The fort transpired another side of it, from being bastion of defense; it showed me its tender side of veiled love and serenity. If there was anything that I could describe as beautiful, it was that.

My camera clicked from the moment I entered, effortlessly and incessantly. One after the other frame of the same story was written and re written in those clicks. There were families, friends, couples, and kids. They had come Sunday outing, to bask in the sun and then to have bath in the sea. I wish I too hadn’t come alone. But then I wouldn’t have been happy otherwise too. A companion, my friend had once told me, was there to talk about things which would seem silly but later on is what you would judge as life.

I climbed to one of the old outpost overlooking the sea, and sat there. Behind me, I heard laughter of some happy couple. Even though it was my first trip there, countless dreams of me picturing just the way I was, came flashing to me.

I smiled. May be this is my life.