nd words are all I have…

And just before i could even type out the words that were raging themselves out of my finger tips, I was passed on this link . And nothing of what I would have written matched the way the article suffices to incarnate the monstrosity of this demented servant & master couple.

Incomplete posts , unrelenting thoughts, borrowed phrases, crazy titles, and finally this. After a much longer typical hiatus though !
At least am not running away this time. Not eschewing what is destined. I tried not to be cliched this time but then that’s why they call it cliched ;), because you end up sounding terminally verbose without your own knowledge, and gloating it like a piece of modern art.

Last few weekends, were not so obliquely different when it came to candidly pass them doing nothing just like Calvin would have loved to. However, with some futile violations of doing something in bits and pieces can be completely ignored. Like - reading Dan Brown’s - Angel & Demons, and watching completely avoidable serials and movies.

Whatever it be I have decided to start up certain things on a war footing. Yes war footing. The first in the list - to build if not everything then only the UI of my web page on the domain I bought last summer for some very mystic reasons ( I fear not to tell them). And it’s more cumbersome than writing this blog. With plethora of new web technologies available at your disposal the phrase - ‘More is less’ in fact actualized for me. Am still confused what to use - GWT (Google Web tookkit), YUI (Yahoo User Interface), Adobe’s FlexBuilder, Ruby on Rails or perhaps something more obscure. Not that I have mastered all of them, but yes I have chalked out the options.
What remains is to find someone who can maybe help me in arguing/coding/discussing how to go about putting the thing in place.

Next in the pipeline is to gobble up the Dan Brown’s novel series. For the first time I can recall, in my life I have read any novel as voraciously as this one. And I cannot be more eager to catch up with the rest of them. There’s something about him, his writing , or perhaps with the subject itself which can leave you craving for more and with so much to contemplate. Simple and realistic fiction which can be addictive. I hope to get some time to finish up the series without any self-made inhibitions.

The last one is most probably the most crucial one - How to get ‘there’ from ‘here’? That’s a bit of abstraction though. Am just waiting for something to turn up. Never ever have relied on probabilities but this time, looks like I have to. No other option. Somethings have to be learned in a harder way.

Currently listening -~~~ “aa khushi se khud kushi kar le” ~~~

Shakespeare’s eternal quote would befit all the time to come -
“All the world’s a stage and all the men and women are but actors”,
but the quote would perhaps take upon a strikingly different form in different eras- such as this, which I feel befits the capitalized and globalized world we live in today -
“All the world’s a stock market and all the men and women are but brokers.”

Investment is all what we do everyday. Isn’t it?

At the end of the fag day, what we might look back and see is our investment in all manners, big and small to earn what we need to live. To live is to invest - not only money but time, effort, brain, goodwill, talent and beliefs. But then why should I be calling it an out and out ‘investment’ and not merely a normal way to live or carrying out our responsibilities disguised as jobs, hobbies, obligations etc etc. After all that is how we have been living ever since the day we know. Yes. But then somewhere down the line as our brains evolved , our dispositions switched towards making investments and see whatever we do not as the natural way of living but as a priced future option. Something I have both repented and enjoyed - often.

Our tendency has grounded to visualize and measure out everything ( and i mean everything) in terms of its potential to give back the desired outcome. We study hard to earn good marks then jobs and then salary. We work hard to climb up the ladder of our corporate hierarchy. We spend time reading to improve our language skills. We socialize and make friends to broader our network of acquaintances. And the only thing I can compare all this to - Our investment in stocks to make more money out of it.

Everything suddenly looks so motivated and intentional. Nothing remains natural and without a reason.

Nothing wrong till now. After all we need motivations and goals to move forward and reach out higher.

It’s just that our learning have become a by-product of what we study.(Do a reality check on how many thing we voluntarily learn everyday without any future motivation or looking at its potential use).
Our proficiency and accomplishments have become a side-product of our struggle to be the root of the corporate hierarchy.(Figure out how much of your work is oriented in completing the targets set in the last appraisal cycle.)
Our feelings of content and surprise while reading have become ephemeral against our quest to be more skilled in language and to increase the book count.(The last book you felt close to you heart and which was finished seamlessly. Remember??)
Our best friends and confidants are just a result of the random probability of colliding with someone being worthy of from our friends list.(Check your orkut list and find out how many ppl you really have talked to in the last one year).

Nothing wrong even now. After all its just a shift of priority and that’s a subjective human right everyone has in a democracy.

Maybe this transformation, is the characteristic of our times. Maybe there’s nothing wrong in this shift. Maybe I am wrong.

Egzactly….!!

To someone like me whose inhibitions towards bollywood movies are more or less governed by the opportunity to watch them, what I have written above would definitely make (non)sense and unveil the context. For others there is this post. To begin with, this is yet again the same time of the year when India witnesses an educational turmoil in form of an examination which perhaps would be and remain an imagination for the rest of the world. I Imagine a satellite picture of more than two hundred thousand peoples giving a test at various corners of the country . Yes am talking about the CAT which was back last weekend and just like the festival of Diwali it left the smoke and thundering sounds as its aftermath. The only difference between the two - the proportion of those encashing happiness and those left somewhat burned and blistered. And the bomb which ripped apart everyone was the legacy of our 200 years of freedom struggle - The English language. or more technically the ‘verbal’ section in the jargon of MBA blues.

I have had an interesting rapport with ‘English’ ever since the first day of my school. That of unnerving each other. I wasn’t built to learn it. If there is something of which I have remained paranoiac all through my life, the answer would come out in a jiffy - English. Somehow I have never been able to make it up to the required levels of English. I hated English as a child. I hated learning the words which looked alien to my mind. I hated making a separate notebook for grammar all through my school days. I somehow remained disjoint from the whole class when it came to English. My second lowest marks would be in English subject (the lowest being in the social science - I luv to hate this subject till this very day ). My library book would travel along in my bag to home, remain untouched for the whole week and then back again to library on the day of the return. The only time I managed to lead in English for a quarter of year, I was almost about to flunk in one or the other subjects. In short English never became my cup of tea.

And in turn English would put me in the background of activities. Devoid me of any deserving limelight. Give me a taste of my incompetency and make me hate it more and more. Nevertheless in recent past ( i.e. the last two years) I have to my surprise been attracted towards English. I have pulled up my self to appreciate the beauty and potency of this language. I have learned to how to take a stand like a connoisseur when it comes to English in all its various forms ( except for the poetry which I still feel is something highly subjective and the subtlety of which can be understood by its writer, and sometime even he/she cannot). The rivalry however still continues to this day. :((

I have invested quantum of time contemplating why is it that English plays a vital role in all my setbacks, and then like a spark of nirvana it occurred to me that perhaps I am here to redefine (???? OK…refine) the standards of English, and be known more as a legendary figure of English language rather than of any programming language. But that may take all together a new incarnation to accomplish. And untill then perhaps the powers that be - would make me struggle again for this new independence I seek from the paranoia of not being an ‘anglo-indian’.

I like reading quotes. I have been particularly interested in them for quite some time now. I have read the worst and the best of them. I have also believed in the fact that no matter how exhaustive I become in my reading of the quotes, there would still be some under the graves, which are better than the ‘best’ and worse than the ‘worst’. Not unless I hit upon this one today. which perhaps I think is the worst and the biggest loser quote of all times.

“All success begins with spreading your W.I.N.G.S - believing in your Worth, trusting your Insight, Nurturing yourself, having a Goal, and devising a personal Strategy. nd then, even impossible dreams become real.”

To a normal eye - this outshines as one of those inspirational quotes which can push people to die for their success. For me this is nothing more than- BULL****. A made up crap. Something written for the sake of writing. Something you can honestly forget the moment your swing your eye balls. Something which can work only for those who don’t really want to work. Miles away from the reality and into the futile core world of hyper-philosophical or gyan-darshan. Who’s a** can benefit out of such verbose and useless quotes, glamored and enamored like those fugacious Chinese products, which are good for nothing other than creating a mass infatuation.

Call me names for putting it all like this, but I just can’t help despising this one. For there are reasons which are quite in parallel to why I hate those stinking K-serials on the idiot box. For first, it looks like something straight out of an evil mind. Someone wanting to confuse people and alluring them with yet another stupid excuse for not working their ways out towards success.

Some people would contemplate after reading - Aaah..am most probably not trying to believe in myself (come on even bush would have believed in himself for all what he has done so far) or I better nurture myself (with what and how only god knows !!), and do I have a goal as yet, I think I better search out(read as waste time) for yet another one….and what not.

So grossly hollow that you can’t get a quark of wisdom in them after closely analyzing them and that is why I hate these category of unquotable quotes, meant to be deleted for ever from everywhere - net, books and most importantly from our minds..!

“I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am sure Nobody would not have heard/read/listened this -

“While Capitalism is screwing the Working Class, Government is sound asleep, the People are being completely ignored and the Future is full of Shit.”

Though it’s part of something more trickier and more johhnier , than what it looks here, it says it all and if not read it down.

I know it’s one of those things someone puts on the blog, when he/she is suffering wildly from writer’s block. Not that am a writer, but yeah sometimes I feel like one,but quite unlike the the ones who feel complete and ingenuous in their writing, tracing every filth they get on board of various tabloids across the net just in order to make yellow journalism more yellower.

Yes am pointing my finger……ok..my fist, on all those bloggers who are complacent in being the next blatantly screaming ‘read-me-please—for-god-sake’ portal owner, through their blogs. They will regularly post the wild and wackiest of news picked up from the plethora of pathetic news sites and google out fact and figures to somehow make the whole news look like the event of the century. I have seen a sudden surge in the no. of bloggers posting news items picked up seemingly from the last result page of google search, and contrive a mind candy for their regulars, like yet another potboiler story of a soap, as if those sucking K-serials were already not causing enough pain, of every kind.

The question being does that serve purpose? Does that not violate the original idea and concept of blogging?

Well yes and no.
No, because this is the age of remixes and remakes. So these bloggers are no less than their show-biz counterparts in deriving their ‘inspiration’ from what is happening in the world today. I think blogging has indeed picked up a new show-biz culture paralleled by enormous fan following and the desperateness of the readers waiting for their super-writers to release a new post. Huh !! as if they had choices. ( I think the proverb should be changed to - ‘Readers are not choosers’)

And Yes because we know it all, the blogging was just a modern approach of maintaining personal diaries only differing in their access to the public as against a method of generating revenues (thanks to google’s non-sense adsense), archiving remakes of sensational news, or of showcasing discoveries of obscure facts which essentially only goes to tell the readers about the writing abilities of the associated authors and nothing else.

Ok I know, if that starter on the top of the page still looks alien to this whole post and has been consistently troubling, let me give an explanation. (Just and extempore attempt … [;)])

“While the bloggers are screwing the idea and concept of blogging, the blogspot is sound asleep, the reader’s choices are being completely ignored and the future of blogs is full of shit.”

Sounds convincing ? isn’t it …

The last post will continue in the next post ;)……Procrastination redefined…:P. OK it’s just that I don’t feel like writing, I feel like avenging someone for something…and that someone can be anyone…;). This is perhaps due in the wake of incidents such as these :

The 9/11 being repeated in not it’s whole entirety but on a much lesser scale only goes to show that Osama has now his competitors within the US. He’s offloaded of the burdens of downsizing the high skyscraper in the states. Pun intended -Of Course !!, and I wholeheartedly extend my condolences for those who died in this mishap. Longing to see this world as a safe place to live in…

The more bolder and more armed media of India, capsizes the Orkut community - I hate India. Now can someone explain if it’s not paranoia but something else that makes our media in general to run amok and be instigated by a handful members of a community of eternal Indian haters i.e. Pakistanis - Ggod, bless them, their country and our media.

And the Star-struck pune-ites were no less fanatic in chasing Angelina Jolie’s all-black tinted glass Innova, than poor farmers of drought-struck areas chasing relief helicopters for food packets. The result : a chaser getting knocked down by the cab containing jolie-pitt, the couple being pulled in a for a case in court and new channels coudn’t have asked for more. But who’s to be blamed really? The so called ‘roads’ of pune, the driver of the cab, the chaser or more interestingly jolie herself. And what does this showcase : desperateness, indecency, frustration, or simply our innate instinct of getting wild.?
Can’t help feeling for those two poor souls…

as always praying ………….\_/

How many different modes of public transport have you used in a single day? 2, maybe 3, or a max of four. But my trip last weekend to Goa via Bombay ( yep, i still prefer ‘Bombay’ over ‘mumbai‘..in some contexts ) was more than a myriad of transport switches. The whole thing went something like this…I biked from my office back to the flat, picked up an auto from there to airport, boarded the flight off to bombay, caught a ‘mumbai‘ local train to churchgate, took a yellow-black taxi to go to my friend’s office, and finally got up on a bus off to Goa. Huh..!! so much for a day isn’t it. Though the list is not exhaustive, but it still covers almost all of the feasible conveyances which anyone would take during a trip, only that it was a bit uncommon in a time span of a single day journey.

The rides look simple when i say, “i picked, boarded, got up etc etc on different modes”…but each of them has its own story behind the the groovy scenes…so I would start with my bike..
The most important thing i feel for a biker is to ensure that he doesn’t run out of fuel and be stranded in an place without a pump ;). It turned out as I was returning from a place in the outer of the city that the bike had run out of fuel…I was already under the impression that the bike was running on reserve fuel, so those jerks from my bike’s fuel starved engine gave a ‘jor ka jhatka‘ to me, and only when I pulled out my hand for the reserve knob I happily realised that I was wrong and there was enough reserve to take me back home.

Searching for the auto next, to hop to airport was torturous. I was amazed as I came out of the flat with a 8Kg bag on my shoulders, at the scorching sunny daylight at 2 in the afternoon. The whole morning it was lightly clouded with no anticipated signs of a ray of sun for the whole day. But as luck would have it, the conspiracy was mid-way, and the drivers of the very few autos which were there, refused to earn in lieu of the relishing siesta they were having. Eventually had to walkdown almost half-a-kilometer to catch one of the empty moving autos. :((

At the airport, I was there well before the departure time of my flight. With a single bag as cabin luggage you can be more than comfortable in hanging around at the airport without bothering to keep an eye on your heavy luggage pieces. Certainly being there well before time, saved me from the serpentine queue for the boarding pass and I proceeded for the security check-in. There a CISF security in-charge put me on hold at the check point for I don’t know why, becaue I dont think I was looking so pathetic to be put on hold for an informal interrogation. The in-charge asked me where did i work, how much did i earn and all sort of impertinent questions. Having answered them with a broad smile on my face he asked me to move on. As I moved to pick up my bag, the bag scanner pointed out a small bottle of scent I had packed in my bag which eventually I had to throw away in the dustbin kept there. And thus came the end of one of my longest kept bottles of perfume and of course one of the most cherished ones. :((

I took my bag and rushed to the wating lounge. After a boring half-hour wait, the boarding was announced. Seeing the length of the line, I decided to hold on and wait till the line gets shorter. You can do this except for an Air Deccan Flight which is a free seater, and wherein people would not mind even running on the taxi-way to get their coveted seats. Any how, seeing the last few passengers in the line I moved and waited in line for my turn for the last security check. When I reached at the check point, the guard pointed out the missing security check stamp on the tag attached to my baggage. This probably happened as I collected my bag unaware of the missing stamp, because of the perfume bottle. I kept cussing myself for making a fool of myself, as I moved to get that stamp on the tag.

The journey continued in the part - II

When a lucid and limpid voice, with and elegant yet vivid tone, hits your ear, you are bound to stop, to find out and to hear what that voice has to say….and add to that when the subject of that voice is even more philosophically alluring, you just can’t afford to evade.

Well, this is what a friend of mine, infact today confronted me with. Something which I would have missed otherwise. Though it’s a mere excerpt from one of the scenes of ‘Lageraho Munnabhai’ - one of the founding movies of the new age bollywood cinema I should say, it is in essence a gross reflection of the kind of lives we live today.

Will all due acknowledgement to the dialogue writer of the movie and many thanks to my friend for typing the voice back into text, which I have quoted below, here it goes -

/*–
Un sab ke liye jo daude ja rahe hai shaher main
shaher ki daud me daud ke kerna kya hai
ager yahi jeena hai dosto, to fir merna kya hai?

pehli baarish me train late hone ki fikra hai..bhul gaye bhigate hue tehalna kya hai

serial ke kirdaaro ka sara haal hai malum aur ma ka haal poochane ki fursat kaha hai

ab ret pe nange paon tahalte q nahi..ye to aap hi jaane per dil dahalta q hai?

internet se dunia se to touch me hai lekin pados me kaun rehta hai jaate tak nahi

mobile landline sab ki bhermaar hai lekin jigri dost tak pahuche aise wo taar kaha hai

kab dubate hue suraj ko dekha tha..yaad hai

kab jaana tha ki shaam ka gujarna kya hai

saher ki daud me daud ke kerna kya hai

ager yahi jeena hai dosto to fir merna kya hai?

–*/

Sumptuous, food for thought,isn’t it. [:)]