The Times They Are A-Changing

We have all done our bit of monkeying around in school and though I was the kinds that other kids made fun of because I didn't monkey around much, I still did get my bit of scolding and even a slap from a teacher (I know!) for fooling around. I remember once we irritated our teacher so much that she said she wont take a class for us again. It took a lot of persuading and cajoling to get her in our class again.

In my second year at IIT, we had a rather young and cute looking English teacher who was very aware of the fact that she was young and cute looking :). So one evening when she was taking a class she suddenly looks up and says "Who was it?", we are all stunned, we all look at each other clueless as to what it was that had made her rosy cheeks redder with embarrassment or anger. There was silence for a while, pin-drop and awkward silence, suddenly we knew who did what and we broke into a peel of laughter. It happened again, "it" was a tweet (of a bird. Boy! These days you got to clarify) which the teacher mistook for a boy whistling at her. For a couple of classes we could all notice her a little embarrassed and red cheeked at the incident.

Time passes, we grow with the bittersweet memories of the past, laughing at our mistakes. Sometimes we learn from them and many a times we can't fix what we broke. And sometimes, tables turn, the pestering kid of yesterday will be pestered by his own kids tomorrow. As for me, I get to teach a bunch of imps.

I am a part of an NGO which aims to bring awareness to the society by teaching the younger generation about their rights and responsibilities. The course is wonderfully designed for 8th class students as a no credit course with a year end project. The project itself involves creating real solutions to real life problems like Garbage disposals, mismanaged road network etc. Now it all sounds fun, at least to me it does but only till I enter the class, for once I do, the ruckus that those small devils create bring back those fleeting memories of the teachers we so cruelly tormented and Bob Dylan's old song...

The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

Edward de Bono and String Theory

Every now and then I am sure we hear of analogies that seem to make absolutely no co-relation to the topic of discussion to anyone other than the analogizer [;)]. I once had a friend, lets call her XXX who used to boil down allllllll things known to mankind to a sambar wada problem [XXX if you are reading this, I am not talking about you, its about some other friend who has that sameproblem interesting habit ;)]. We have a long interview process for a candidate and we sit together to decide if the candidate is the right choice. She goes - "He is an idliwala and we want to make samosas!". We have a week long sales meeting trying to see if a product makes sense for India market, she says: "We are trying to sell idli in Chandni Chowk" [which in all probabilities meant that its not going to sell ;)]. I could go and on with how everything from string theory to making tea can all boil down to idli sambhar problem but then it wont leave anything for your imaginations :). It sometimes gets entertaining to watch an analogizer stretch his analogy thin to demonstrate that indeed it does make sense.

The other day in a casual office chat AR says "Retail business is like doctors". No worries... I didn't make head or tail of it either [however if you did, read on to make sure that you got it right and if you DID get it right, Hats off to you for the lateral thoughts (as an aside, the same AR just helped me remember the phrase "lateral thinking" by asking me to google Edward de Bono!)]. Anyways, what he meant to say was that professionally unless you are well known as a Doctor or a Retailer, you dont make a lot of money. He went on to explain the analogy; A small retailer cannot make a lot of profit unless people know him, at which point he can go on to charge a premium for the stuff he has, a smaller retailer needs to offer the stuff at the lowest price he can afford to attract customers. NOW do you see the analogy? Well.. honestly I dont :) :)

On the brighter side however, these analogies truly show how wonderfully human mind works. Relating two seemingly very different things to better understand the problem at hand, to see a pattern in the chaos is a quality of a beautiful mind.

PS: If you are thinking how the image of the brain relates to the post. Well.. Its not about relativity.. is it?

An ode to friendship

It was Eid-Ul-Zuha yesterday, and though there is an Eid every year, this Eid was special for me. Ever since I have moved out of home for college, I have been away from home in Eid only a couple of times. Once in college and once a few years back on job. Now college is always fun, there are way too many friends around, it is almost like a home away from home. But the time I was at job, it really sucked. I had really missed home and I think I had never felt so homesick and desolate before that.

Footage from last year: My Birthday

This time I was again away from home for Eid, but now I am a family man [Cheesy.. I know ;)], and I live in a home and this was the first big festival we are alone (my wife and I).. It was wonderful, though I missed home a lot, but it was fun. We went to a friend's place in the morning and had friends at my place in the evening and at night. We did nothing much, just ate, talked junk [me doing most of the talking, to which I got a feedback that lately I am talking a lot;) ], called home, called friends and talked more. It was fun, the day reminded me of the importance of friends in life. Family is obviously important and cannot be replaced with anything else, but friends have their special place that cannot be filled with something else. I am grateful to have made a few very good friends for making me feel special.

दिये जलते हैं,
फूल खिलते हैं,
बड़ी मुश्किल से मगर,
दुनिया में दोस्त मिलते हैं!

Wheels of change

After a long pause, here I am, back to the random bakar. The thing about long pauses is that there is so much of an inertia to start again, you keep looking for the big bang to come back with (damn Newton!). Well, but then, mea culpa [One of early comments in code by one of my seniors who opened the doors for me, to the world of absurd comments].

Anyways, I am sure that no one would be interested to know what was keeping me busy; but just in case someone was wondering, well, I got married, switched jobs [after four wonderful years at my last company] and moved to a new place. New job came with new responsibilities, new team and a brand new product that we have to develop. In smaller setups this would typically boil down to ad-hoc meetings, filling every corner of the whiteboard which cannot be erased as no-one keeps meeting notes other than the faithful whiteboard, team huddling up every now and then around every other cubicle and every possible nook and corner for lack of enough meeting rooms (I remember we once huddled up in a restaurant where we had gone for a team outing but ended up talking about work). But in a larger organization where the meeting rooms are a-plenty, you got to "book" a meeting rooom in the outlook organizer for setting up a meeting. You got to send meeting "invitations" to all concerned parties and once the meeting has started, you got to send a "gentle reminder" to everyone to say that everyone should assemble (compared to the smaller setup where all you do is shout out loud, call people and start the "huddle"). One then shares his screen and someone else would take meeting notes and in an hour you would loose the meeting room to someone else who has booked it for the next slot and you walk out satisfied with the heated debate or with the joy of having scheduled a follow-up-meeting to discuss what was left incomplete :).

But that was about what was keeping me busy, the blog was about this new.. mmm... maybe I should call it a hobby... that I have developed of drawing cartoons whenever I have some free time. Hope you like it... :)

Again I am sure no one would be interested in knowing when I get free time to do all this junk, but in case you are wondering... in those long meetings when I dont find anything better to do and I have my notebook and a pen handy :)

Life in a Metro

Anshul, Kishmish & I sweating in the Mumbai local

Few weeks back I was in Mumbai, the second most populous city in the world; I have been to big shining cities, but Mumbai has a charm, its diversity stands out. Much to KM's discord, we travelled in the local train. It was amazing to see the crowd, local workers, students, office goers, they were all there, in an almost figurative harmony, moving towards a common destination. It was pretty hot and by the time we got off at Marine drive, we were all sweaty but the experience was worth the sweat :)

Marine Drive

We walked along the Marine drive in the scorching heat by the Arabian Sea; it was contrast contrasted, the wonderful skyline, spic roads and suddenly a lunch of Pav Bhaaji on a chatai by the beach under a tree at Chaupathi.
It was amusing to see the many many dabbawalaas making their way through the crowds. The fact that they still make their deliveries with a six sigma accuracy (correctness 99.9999% of the time) really sounds like a myth.

We reached The Taj and I was amazed (as usual) to know that I let out a sorrowful moan at the sight of the beautiful Taj being marred by the Terrorist attacks last November.

The city of Mumbai is really full of life and full of contrasts, of intertwined fates of people traveling together in the Mumbai locals. I really fell in love with the city and as we moved back towards the hotel in the evening, I was huming the old tune...

Zaraa haske.. Zaraa bachke... Ye hai mumbai meri jaan...

A watery weekend

Last weekend AS4 was all enthu to go somewhere, away from work; after a load of confusion on who is going and who is not, MB & I backing out at the last moment, trip was almost cancelled once, when we finally decided to leave Noida and leave for Rishikesh for a white water rafting "expedition" at 3 o clock in the morning.

Six of us, AS4, AS2, RM, T, MB & I started the trip with a late night movie (Excorcism of Emily Rose) at MB's place. With two cars, four drivers and two walky-talkies [MB has these really fancy toys that he plays with >:)] that we used to call each other names from one car to the other. The first stop was at Roorkee, I stopped over at IMG Lab and had a tea at VK sir's home. As was typical of VK sir, he offered us to arrange the insti guest house to stay and take bath.

After a brunch at Rishikesh, we started the white water rafting at 2:30 (delayed by MB's shopping for a capri and a "rafting" shoe!!!). Reaching the spot we realized we had left the camera down-stream and decided to request a friendly looking group of people (Chirag & Group) to take our group snap which they could send us later.

The rafting was wonderful, apart from the "adventurous" cliff jumping which RM & I took turns to scare each other for over 15 mins before we finally took the plunge, I "saved" an Ankita from drowning [yes.. that's me! OK... I just taught her how to float, and I guess it worked.. :)]..
We headed back for Delhi at noon the next day. The idea was to stop for a poori-halwa lunch at Har-ki-paudi, Haridwar. It was a like a total recall for me, from the campus days. We spent almost three hours in the water: floating, swimming and shouting till time would not permit us to linger on longer.
The next stop was @ Dominoes & Nirula's for a dinner in Meerut (where MB lost his cap again.. second time in 8 hours... ), we reached back in Noida at around 12.
We slept at 1 in the morning, five of us huddled in my room,bringing an end to the fabulous weekend, very well spent.

Three cheers to the trip.

How fleet is a glance of mind

How fleet is a glance of the mind! Compared with the speed of its flight, The tempest itself lags behind, And the swift-winged arrows of light.

It is amazing how easily the mind can shut off all the external voices and how easily it can be transported and carried away to a different world.

It was past midnight as I sat in my room infront of my laptop working on some document, I got up to get some water and I realized that the folks next door were playing loud music to celebrate something. As I drank the water I notice that the songs they were playing were the old dance numbers that were ever so hit on the campus - Summer of 69, Saturday Night, Its my life... In a moment I was back in that Thomso night, dancing like there's not a worry in the world, shouting, running from NesT to Hanger... Incredible.. A fleeting memory of the EE gang, IMG gang, those friends KU, GB, PG.. Those were really the best days of my life.. I call KU to know he is working late in the office.. PG to know she is M***I** [Top secret ;)]

Load shedding... Zoom in to present... MS saying that "woh bhi din the... aur aaj bhi din hein" (those were the days... and these are days too [not exactly... but hope u got the sense if u didnt get the original])... and in that moment my mind takes another flight; to the Kungfu master Tortoise Oogway from Kungfu Panda (Must watch if you like animations or action movies)

Oogway: You are too concerned about what was and what will be. There is a saying: yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.

And yes, today is a present.. to be remembered in the time to come.

A trip to remember

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With Dusshera holiday on Thursday, people were taking off on Friday to make the last weekend a long one. A recent vacation and an impending delivery at work precluded my further vacationing, however when AS4, AS2 & RD approached me with a plan to go biking to Jaipur I simply found it irresistible, more so because the plan was to leave Delhi Friday evening and be back on Monday for work!!

This was to be my first long distance biking experience so I was obviously excited. Beside the few "glitches" the trip was very smooth and not half as painful as T had said it would be. I have a small logging of major events that happened en-route (recorded on AS4s mobile;)).

Oct 10 2008 9:51 PM - Leave Ghaziabad after fuelling up
Oct 11 2008 1:15 AM - Have Dinner
Oct 11 2008 2:53 AM - Long tea break Baniyala Mod
Oct 11 2008 5:23 AM - Bakar Break @ Shiv villas
Oct 11 2008 7:45 AM - Check in Hotel Sarfaraz
Oct 11 2008 1:25 PM - Lunch @ Bombay Mishtan Bhandar
Oct 11 2008 7:50 PM - Visit Choki Dhani
Oct 11 2008 9:15 PM - Dinner @ Choki Dhani

Choki Dhani deserves a special mention, the place is a complete mockery of indian villages, other than the fact that guys wear ethnic clothes and there are camels and bullock carts roaming around [which, by the way are used to conduct guided 3 mins rides; And.. If you are thinking it sucks :) it does {We did take the camel ride though ;)} ] there is a guy selling popcorn, there's icecream and there is HUGE HUGE HUGE queue for meals. The experience had almost turned out to be the low-point of the trip, seeing the super long Q we had almost decided to turn around and eat at some common restaurant, when we decide that now that we had spent this much time & money to be there, might as well make the most of it. And Boy, we turned it around to make it the high-point of the trip. Random jokes about Tea being served in plastic cups and the resolution to do the Train around the organized folk dance and to get more people involved to make it look like a college disco party and the meticulously ridiculous ideas on how to make sure that we are kicked out of the place not only brought our spirits back but proved a source of entertainment to all around. When we finally managed to get our dinners served, and we did our best in amusing everyone around us, the server poured in extra ghee in my plate saying that I need to be strong like Salman Khan. And in no time, we were back to our cheerful selves [though we didnt do the Train neither did we get kicked out]

Oct 12 2008 3:51 AM - Sleep after a LOTS of senti talks
Oct 12 2008 1:30 PM - Checkout from Sarfaraz Hotel
Oct 12 2008 1:40 PM - Juice & Lunch
Oct 12 2008 2:30 PM - Photo @ Very cool hill
Oct 12 2008 3:30 PM - Fined. (I was not carrying bike papers, and yeah... I didnt have a license :) [we were not fined for that though... Lucky chance.. AS2 had JUST taken over the bike from me]
Oct 12 2008 6:30 PM - Boating @ Sili Said Lake
Oct 12 2008 7:30 PM - Reached Alwar
Oct 12 2008 9:30 PM - Dinner @ Bivadi
Oct 12 2008 11:10 PM - Reach Dhaula Kuan @ Delhi
Oct 13 2008 12:09 AM - Reach AS4s home
Oct 13 2008 12:50 AM - Back @ my home.yo yo yo

And there it was, a wonderful trip....

Well, the trip would be incomplete if I did not mention the little "glitches" we had. After a night long ride we were pretty tired and sleepy. Now those who know me would know that one thing I CANNOT resist is sleep. So when we reached Jaipur, it was almost 5 in the morning, we were on a hilly road with quite a few steep turns. I was riding, RD is behind me when suddenly RD shouts at me for not being careful, I was almost ready to ram into the railing. I am quite shocked, not knowing that I was careless but knowing that I hadnt seen the railing AT ALL... I had dozed off :) [well its not something to be happy about.. But... in retrospect it really looks funny :)] we changed seats but boy I was in such a bad shape I just couldnt keep my eyes open, I drank all the water that was there, kept sprinkling myself with water but I just couldnt manage to keep sitting straight till we reached this hotel and I dozed off at the reception and was hauled to the room :)

But as they say.. Alls well that ends well... and it did for us...

Movies: Life Is Beautiful

When:

This was a movie I saw with APS @ his hostel in IIT D. I saw this movie back to back with Schindler's List and Rise of the Evil both of which are also in my favorite list. Apart from the movie being just wonderful and possibly my #1 the watching of the movie itself was just wonderful and memorable.

Why:

I liked the movie because of its EXTREME simplicity. Of late I have realized that I see beauty in simplicity, the most beautiful to my mind are not the most exquisite and elaborate but the simplest. The wonderful music that plays in the background is also one of the highpoints of the movie.

What:

The movie revolves around a guy who believes that life is beautiful, through pain and despair he keeps smiling and brings hope to his loved ones and people all around him. It shows the power love has, it is love which gives him his ability to smile.

Wonderful movie... And I believe it too.. that life is beautiful... Just because there is always hope.... And love...

On lending a helping hand

Every now and then there are mails floating around asking the receiver to forward the mail to others as that would lead to the service provider paying up anywhere between 1 paise to 1 cent for every forward. This money in turn would help some poor soul to afford a terrible sickness. Today I got one such mail:

IIT Bombay student Anupam Biswas 5th sem. Mechanical Engg is suffering from Colukabki (caused due to excessive nabad and depression) a disease very rarely found (3 in a billion). His condition is very pathetic and the treatment is very expensive, obviously his parents are not able to afford his treatment. Orkut has agreed to pay 1 paisa after each time this message is forward. So please pass to all ur friends. please i request you to pass it to as many people as u can and lets try to save someone's life. I request please do not ignore this. It will take......

It made me wonder about a few things:
1. How naive can a person get!!! Colukabki ?????? nabad??????? Unimaginably random names.. Google is just a click away, it will take a second to know that there is NO ailment by that name.
2. What kind of people can start such sick chains! There will be many who would be forced to mistrust even a genuine mail.

3. There is a VERY small part, almost an appendix in us which wants us to help other human beings, someone in need, but there is a bigger larger sense that prevails and wants most of us to chill and relax and do our work, sit in our tight loop of what we call our lives. Unless it involves sending a mail [without even thinking twice of its implications] or writing a blog about the poor, most of us just pass. And though there is a struggle inside which really wants us to do something make some change somewhere, ultimately our better sense prevails... And we pass... and that.. sadly is what I have been doing....

I am reminded of MG... [http://www.noragging.com/], amazing to see someone doing his bit to bring about a change that can effect somebody's life in his busy schedule of work... hats off to you MG....