The New Life!

The belief that you need a change, stems from the monotonies of your everyday life. I can say the same thing happened to me. Although, along with the ‘monotonies’ bothering me, I really wanted to escape. My failures and sadness. I wanted to start all over again. That’s precisely what was going on in my mind when I got on that plane. I didn’t know what I was heading for and to be honest I didn’t  care. I wanted to take it on and so began my journey into the wilderness of the ‘new world’. After a grueling twenty three hour flight, with a stop over at Amsterdam, I arrived in Boston. The place I would be for the next two years of my life.

We got down at the airport. We walked out, we didn’t expect anyone to show up. It wasn’t there in the plan anyways. We took our luggage, walked out asking our way into the city. It’s quiet interesting how Logan International Airport is placed right on the outskirts along the ocean. It’ actually feels as if we are entering Boston from there on or may be I was too excited. Everything seemed grand. We called a cab. I took out the piece of paper and read it, aloud. The cabbie asked.

“Should I take from Mass. Ave?”

After taking a considerable amount of time deciphering the accent and comprehending what was actually being asked, we looked at each other.

“It’s our first time around. We don’t know”

“Okay”

Stupid immigrants. He probably would have thought. It was cold, as we drove towards our destination cool, strong wind hit our faces. Finally we arrived. Mission Main, the place is called and we were on the Smith Street. 12 C is the Apartment we need to go. Leaving the cab you understand that it’s the first payment you are going to make. The cabbie is the first guy who bites into your wallet. $ 40, my first ‘huge’ payment. Actually it could have been $ 37.5 but then we had a lesson in ‘tipping’ for two and a half dollar. Very important. Although I believe it collides with the idea of a free country but anyways, I am just an immigrant on student visa.

Whenever you go to a new place, and ‘plan’ to call it your home for next two years. You logically first figure out the place where you would stay. I had not done that part of the process, all I had done was told a person that I was coming and to arrange for a temporary accommodation. Irresponsible, but then God has his way of working. I found good friends, once whom I can cherish all my life and love, which gave me a purpose in this otherwise vacuous daze called life.

Expectation

Expectation is a funny thing. You expect from people whom you love, whom you trust but you forget one thing. What right do you have to expect from them? Does your love for them give you the right? Why do we need reciprocation of love or friendship? Why can’t we just selflessly love someone?

In the Shadow of the Dragon

In 2004, China held a Sino-Africa Summit and invited the heads of all the African nations to Beijing to discuss trade and commerce. The repercussions of this innocuous act of friendship and progress were felt in 2009. Five years of following Mao’s directive of ‘keep a low profile’ has made China a power to reckon with, which recently overpowered many of Washington D.C ‘s opinions. Is it that a new oriental superpower which has never been benevolent to India is emerging? Will the Dragon be so powerful that it will dominate the world in the next ten years? With the current trend it’s becoming even more plausible. Recently China has been making it’s presence felt by various defiant activities like climate change, meddling with internet freedom. Well, it has succeeded and has compelled the whole world to take notice. But the question is, how has it become so powerful?

What happened in post Sino-African Summit Africa is a classic example of ‘New Age Imperialism’. The summit set down the tenets of collaboration, peace and harmony between China and the African nations. Heavy Chinese investments followed in regions such as Congo, mainly known for their manganese reserves. It opened up a plethora of opportunities for China ranging from oil to other natural resources. Africa also provided cheap manual labor a prerequisite in such operations. So China had everything going for it. In a continent like Africa where poverty and corruption is rife, bribing is a commonplace practice. Bribing the leaders, China has been able to import all the fruits of mining to mainland where it has invested it in weapon making and infrastructure building. The result, China’s 2009 power display which left the whole world agape literally asking, “What just happened?”

While the western world may be tormented by same-sex marriages and marijuana, India definitely has to consider the growth of China. With China’s GDP growth and military prowess it is highly unlikely that India will ever equal China’s might, let alone surpass it. If India doesn’t start investing heavily in research and development we would not be able to fill the massive gap. Only being a service sector isn’t going to help India in fulfilling it’s super power. For those who think India is a super power, I hate to break this to you but we are far faraway from being a super power. The terms used for India as the next economic hot-spot are very misleading. A deception which we use to make ourselves feel better.

When it comes to China even US is choosing it’s words carefully now. It seems they have realized which the rosy Indian fantasy has been unable to come to terms with. It’s pretty clear that while dealing with middle east showdown US somehow overlooked this ghastly development. It took 1962 Sino-India conflict to make India realize that it should upgrade it’s armed forces, although a conflict like that now would leave India too damaged to spring back again. A superior diplomatic tact should be employed to deal with this situation. We have to weigh all the options clearly keeping the future in sight. At least we should be able to resolve all our conflicts with China as soon as possible, although in doing so we must send out a positive message. It’s an onus for bureaucracy to strike the right balance and come out as a winner. If done perfectly it would bode well for posterity.

So if India is done with it’s ‘Aman Ki Asha’ gimmick then it’s time to move on to a worthy opponent who is bent on taking over the world in the next ten years. We now have to get over our old habits and shouldn’t become complacent in peace, if this is what we call peace? When we talk about peace with Pakistan we must not forget that our armed forces are still guarding our fronts amidst difficult terrains of Kashmir. Try asking their families what ‘Aman’ means to them. We can give speeches and write blogs advocating India-Pakistan peace process, but it would be better if we check the facts. In a survey done recently most of the Pakistanis consider India a threat just after US. It’s better if we come to our senses as early as possible and don’t take anything on face value rather reason and question. If China stealthily continues to amass a lot of wealth and weapon in the years to come then India has to choose it’s options. The so-called young leaders like Rahul Gandhi are just here living the eternal NRI fantasy ‘to do some social work in a third world country’. Congress is in power and so is the young brigade which is busy in taking petty pot shots and the local train ride.

The problem is that we have always under estimated China. China on the other hand has done the required homework. It knows India’s weak point is mushrooming terror industries on the Indian subcontinent. So if ever, we are in the state of war with China half of the damage will be done by these terrorist outfits and separatists, all China has to do is supply weapons to these violence hungry people. India actually faces a triple sided war. The Pakistan sponsored terrorism, the internal terrorist activities and China. China can utilize all to completely destroy India. It would be like an old Chinese fetish in action. While an unstable Pakistan is good for China, a stable one is great. Growing Chinese control over the Indian Ocean is another reason for concern.

The Idea

It’s like smoke around me, only it doesn’t choke me. I can see things clearly in the haze of this smoke. It feels like a holy ritual, the steam dancing around me. It feels so ….neat, real. Undiluted sense of joy. I feel so relaxed as if entering a trance, I can hear the drum beats now . The tempo slow but clear. Every knot melts away, the mind gives way, I think I have surrendered. I’m becoming one with it now almost merging. The sanctity is infectious, it has entered in my mind. All the darkness washed away with the dirt on my body…

“You are getting late for your college”

It’s time to get out of the shower.

Traveling to Malad is like a penance, especially when you pass through Goregaon. There is a weird smell in the air that upsets your stomach. I have not been able to get over that feeling yet. It’s like I’ll puke anytime now. I control it looking heavenwards. It’s an arduous journey which I am compelled to take. Nothing great about it, definitely not. Finally I arrive, punch-drunk. Similar faces, some smiles, some scorns, all treated with equal respect by me. After all there can be misunderstandings…. So forgiven.

There is a swimming pool in our college. Yeah believe it or not there is. It’s where people meet to complete assignments, meet friends, talk rubbish or just enjoy the ambience. We also go there. The stage is being set for the band competition which is to be held in our college as a part of our college festival. We sit there talking stuff from taking road trip in Ladakh to political situation in India also girls are like an ever favorite topic. No matter where it starts it has to end on girls. Guys have a very structured talk that way unlike girls who can talk on varied subjects. It’s probably because most of the guys are unimaginative when it comes to creative talking. Sorry but God made us that way.
“We can perform right on this stage.” said one of us. The dreamer, a confused soul.
“Yeah sure, we don’t have a drummer I guess you remember that.” I said.
“We can do an unplugged thing.”
“How man? who will sing? There are no processors.”
“We can borrow them, one of us can sing. Believe me we can do it.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes it’s like the second last year man. We have sucked at almost each and everything that we have done…robotics, girls. Man this is the chance.” It seemed the Dreamer was really frustrated. He was right after all, but what chance?
“I don’t see it coming I guess…we don’t even have time to rehearse.” I with my avoiding excuse.
We saw the ever lost coming. The pragmatist alerted us all “Here comes the drama event head”
“Hey guys I have given our names for the band competition.”
“What? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Wow…divine comedy” the pragmatist seemed to marvel. “I am going to go out for a smoke now.” That’s ok he was anyways not a part of our band. Band, that’s funny. It wasn’t a band at all…no drums, no base. It was an excuse to get ourselves humiliated in front of some hundred sloshed, doped, angry rock fans and I didn’t even want to take any chances.
“See we can do this. I can take up the lead and you’ll decide about the rhythm.” said the ever lost.
“Are you insane?…there is something like beats to which we play. There is a vocalist with a good voice.”
“Dude we can do it….we’ll do it man”

How To Screw a Viva…Royally!!

When you make up your mind to screw yourself even God cannot change it. The same thing happened to me. Fortunately God did save me in the end. But it was a close one.

After Pcom viva I was in a terrible mood. Not because I had answered incorrectly. Infact I had answered everything perfectly. The problem was the question which I had answered, where something like a revelation for the others (i guess even for the external). He had asked (now I know most people would think..cut the crap and come to the point..but this is necessary as it just shows ‘how fucked up is the system’) “Which block in a superheterodyne receiver is responsible for selecting the desired frequency?” The other two answered RF amplifier and I answered pre-selector which I later found out was nowhere to be found in the book which they referred. Well I had read it in a book written by a reputed guy (a foriegn author) so I kinda knew it was right. So I was bombarded by questions on this ‘great new discovery’ and I can say from the external’s expressions that he was not pleased. Anyways moving on, the next day was my AOA (analysis of algorithms) viva. I came back and hit the sack. Well, I hit it so hard that I woke up almost after five hours. That was at six in the evening.

Now a normal guy in this situation would get tensed and start cramming the algorithms. At that moment my nonchalant attitude shocked me. I got a great (hell yeah!) idea of calling…ok let’s call her X..better Ms. X. “Hey I hope I didn’t disturb you?”

“no not at all..say”

“Hey I was wondering maybe we could just meet at the juice center”

“ya sure”

…excuse me..that wasn’t in the plan..she had to reject but her alacrity stunned me.
“In five minutes”
“I’ll be there” she hanged up. No cajoling, nothing. That was easy. Rushed to the bathroom. Sprayed bottles of deoderants and poured oodles of collogne. I was ready for this walk-date.

I dashed to the juice center and she was already there (hell so punctual). Diffidently I approached her.

“You told me in five minutes?”

“sorry”

“What’s that smell?Did you have a deo-bath?” crap.

“What will you have?” I asked changing the topic.

“Ya a cocktail.but I’ll pay for mine”

“Ya sure…may be you can pay for mine as well” She gave me that disgusting look ..I loved it. I reached my wallet. Hell I had forgotten it. “eh..may be you really have to pay for me”
“what?”
“I forgot my wallet”
“you are not having anything”
“Don’t be so harsh…” I stopped..man this was crazy. I was almost begging. “kidding re”..I like that baby. After that we decided to walk. Well these were the most happiest moments of my life. I had conjured up ways of talking to this girl for almost a year and here I was on a ‘walk-date’. As they rightly say ‘Labor omnia vincit’ (don’t worry my next post will be on this one). I came back at about eight thirty. Then I remember sleeping again. Dreaming about ofcourse more such ‘future’ dates. The other day I got up at seven thirty. Hazily I stared at the calender. I saw the date 8th of may. “Hell I had something on this day”. “Fuck I have my AOA pracs today” I took shower, dressed up and left for the exam hall. I reached the college. Well everything was as usual. Shetty was studying as if he was going to eat the book. Man this guy scared me sometimes. Srinath was talking about some wierd ‘friends’ or ‘simpson’s’ episode. Mennon was walking through the crowded corridor showing thumbs up whenever I happened to see him. Nilesh was as usual no where. Patel and Prasad teaching others and Vikram was engrossed in thoughts of P______ . I quickly saw the algorithms. We were called in to choose a program which we were in the chits in front of us. It was like giving us a choice of death. Tell me how you wish to die- will it be a simple hang or you want to be sodomised to death. I didn’t want any of those. I picked up ( I was praying hard). I went to my computer and opened it. It was selection sort. “YESSSSSSSS” (mentally) God saved me. I saw srinath who was almost about to cry. He had got DFS. I did it perfectly. Showing it to the internal I was now eligible for the next level. The VIVA. It seemed that the external hadn’t turned up and so internal was conducting our vivas which was a relief for most. I sat and next to me was Vikram who’s grey cells were tormented by indexed sequential sort. He asked me something and I was telling him when the internal caught me and asked me to leave. That was bad. After a lot of cajoling she allowed me to sit. She commented “I know you know a lot, that’s why you are teaching others”. Crap! She’s gonna screw me. She’s gonna screw my vivas. HELP.SOS. There was no one. I sat there thinking about every possible thing that she can ask me. The fact is I was praying hard and my prayers were answered. Like an archangel the external stepped in. She took my vivas and they were awesome. Hell this post turned out to be a long one. But there are two things you can learn from this.

Firstly, there is someone up there who really care for you and doesn’t want you to get screwed by some unworthy loosers.

Secondly, never ever think of a walk-date or any kind of date before your vivas. It’s cool that day but the next day is scary.

Truth -The Beginning

 

November, 2004 – I was in eleventh then and was taking a usual stroll on the terrace. I was highly influenced by Swami Vivekananda at that time, thanks to my trip down south to Rameshwaram. I remember asking myself at that time which path should I take. Would it be the usual one, that is go with the life’s flow or would it be something else. “Definitely something else” I remember saying it to myself confidently. Reminiscing I see that I have come a long way. It’s been almost four years now, that I have been searching for the truth only to know it is more complex than I ever thought.

January, 2009 – Even today when you visit my orkut profile you will find my name and next to it I have written “In search of higher truth”. People always scrap what truth. What should I tell them When I myself don’t know anything about it. It’s vastness cannot be explained by me in my own lifetime. But onething is for sure , that the name is not going to change untill I die or the Orkut people themselves decide to delete my profile.

As Robert Frost famously wrote:

 

 

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference”

Four years is a real long time, and I write my journey as it is.

 

A Wierd Love Story

Her frantic looks failed to arouse any sense of emergency in him. May be this was because he hated her. The look in her eyes would terrify him even after fifteen years. He would get up at night soaked in sweat recalling her eyes. He would be eaten away slowly by the feeling that he could have done something untill it became a nemesis. He would curse himself later.

You can love her, you can pine for her but you cannot hate her. That’s what his problem was. He wanted to hate her. But he knew he couldn’t. He saw the doleful details of model town from his window. Her thoughts chided his mind. She was beautiful. Her eyes were enchanting and her face was heavenly. She didn’t joke when she said she was from venus. Her hairs flowed like a river. To watch them resist the wind and atlast giving in and moving with it was a sheer delight. He coudn’t get his thoughts away from her. Her smile was what he always wanted to look at. When she smiled it seemed as if it was an anodyne sent by God to this melancholy world. He was surely being selfish when he thought of having it for himself.

She lay there staring him. “I think you are dead” he said nonchalantly.

(to be continued..)

Viva Maketh An Engineer

There is a general ‘misconception’ that grueling lessons and projects make a good engineer. Unfortunately this misconception is rife and even I don’t think anyone can change it now. But those who are a part of this system know very well what’s the thing that makes a person an engineer- it’s viva.

My vivas just got over today and needless to say i’m really happy and relaxed. Four days, four vivas and four different reasons to get screwed. But truly ‘viva maketh an engineer’. It wonderfully teaches you how not to loose it under extreme pressure conditions. Infact after three semesters of vivas you almost become a doyen of astute manipulation of facts (well, that is what you actually do..isn’t it). I guess the whole process (not to forget extremely painful) can be divided into three stages wait,kill and thrill.

Wait: In wait you don’t have much to do other than just helplessly watch people come one after the other scathed and devoured. Well, the best you can do is that ask people how they were screwed and think about yourself getting screwed in a better way. The bad part is people standing outside the lab pretend to be studying but actually they are too anxious to study. So they say crap things. Like for instance during our Pcom (Principles of communication) vivas we overheard that the external was asking “What is signal?”

Though simple it was tricky.

To this one of my friends started “I’ll say it’s a bloody conspiracy. They don’t want us to know…what frequencies they are transmitting”. What the heck! Can’t help, he is obsessed with ‘That 70′s Show’. But I guess it’s better this catharsis get’s settled outside the lab as external is in no mood for this crap.

Can’t help, even I was asking zany questions like “Hey do you by any chance listen to Korean songs?”

Preliminary training in pressure handling.

Kill: It begins when you are called in for your vivas. Whenever you go in you don’t think about anything. What the external is going to ask? How am I going to get screwed? Will I ever be able to meet my girl friend again?..nothing. Theres this calm which suddenly breaks when you sit across your questioner. Then it starts and it ends. That’s it. Theres nothing between that. Then when you get up to go out.Thoughts which had ceased to come again come to your mind. Then you start analysing the question and the answer. To what extent they were right and uncannily in that brief period of time you figure out what you are going to say when you go outside. The sad part is, it’s not always the same. Sometimes the external pulls you in the viva by scrutinising each and every word you utter and cross questioning everything like a sleuth bent on proving you guilty of a heinous crime and from personal experiences these are bloody freaky situations. So aptly is this stage named KILL, because you are killed anyways.

Thrill: This thing happens when your body returns to normal functioning again. You feel, what thrill? This is a stage before you have actually figured out how your vivas were? Was it great, was it ok or it sucked? But whatever it may be you are thrilled for sure.

Vivas whatever they may be are cool. You win or capitulate. The fun is in experiencing it. I’ll end it up with a typical out-of-the-viva-lab lingo “It’s fucking awesome”.

 

Beauty

I loathe people who flaunt a temporary concept like beauty. Beauty is such a volatile thing. I mean one day you are beautiful, the next day you have a bad accident (may be you have stitches all over your face) and then it’s over. Is that the end? So why not cherish the beauty of the soul which is permanent?

Define God

Recently I was chatting with a garrulous person who asked me to “define god”. Now there are two categories of garrulous people. One who talk sense and the other who talk non-sense. He was from the former category and I enjoyed every bit of this conversation. Maintaining my prevarication I was quick in replying “I don’t know”. This is because I have a tendency of keeping my religious beliefs to myself. Simply put, i don’t like preaching things which are hardly understood by anyone. So by saying that I gave him a chance of “enlightening” me by his perspective of the Almighty.

What he told me is worth writting about.

He told me that the G in GOD stands for generate. Everything has to be generated. Energy should be generated. It’s necessary to generate things. The O stands for operate. The things generated should be operated as there is a purpose for each and everything. The last alphabet D stands for destroying. Whatever created should be destroyed.

Never thought of right!!

Infact the base of Hinduism firmly lies on the trinity of Brahma-Vishnu-Mahesh. The creator, the preserver and the destroyer.