Kolkata...the Malgudi of India

Have you ever imagined of spending ur entire life in a museum? If yes, firstly I believe you should go kill yourself :). Secondly, If the first suggestion sounded harsh come live in Kolkata.
The first thought that comes to your mind when u land in Kolkata is that of nostalgia. Remember the series "Maldugi Days" of the good old doordarshan fame? This place is an enlarged version of it with poorer buses. The comparison is startling:

• Cows idling in the middle of the road
• Theatres with ticket prices Rs 12
• The trams which gives the bicycles a run for their money(Maldugi was better in this respect it let the bicycles rule the road)
  

The list is endless...

The busy campus life cuts you off from exploring this fantasy land ,which is a great relief if you have ever ventured out in a cab. Its a risk that I have taken by criticizing the city while living there but I guess I will be spared now that Ganguly is back in the team and the people have vented their last ounces of vengeance in the two bandhs that were staged in the past week.
I will stop here as the spirit of end term exams has started to roam the corridors of my hostel...Time to exorcize it.

The Nail Tale

The nail…one of the most insignificant parts of our body. If you ponder about it intently then you will notice that it’s not that insignificant either. It’s a constant reminder of how our life is going to be. Puzzled? Let me unravel this mystery.

When the nail starts to grow it’s like an infant. It’s not big enough to be utilized for anything. It doesn’t get damaged, in other words taken care by the fingers carefully.
Then it grows a bit more when you can use it for making a crease while folding a paper and other such basic activities. This is the phase of adolescence when a kid inculcates different values in life or makes a crease in his life’s paper.

Time passes by the nail grows a bit more and the kid grows into a teenager. In this stage of the nail’s life we can use it for pinching people or use it as a bottle opener, the mischievous part of life. The teenage phase of life is where a person is at his mischievous best.

Some more time passes the nail grows a bit more. Now we are really worried, when we eat we are concerned about things stuck in the nail and something keeps lingering at the back of our minds that we should clean it. This is the phase of adulthood in a person’s life. He is knowledgeable enough to understand what’s good or bad for him. He takes in different ideas and views but tries to filter them and use only the most suitable one for himself. He is constantly worried about what he is getting into and makes sure that he fixes things before it gets out of hand.

Time waits for none and so doesn’t the growth of a nail. It grows a bit more and we are more concerned about the nail breaking on impact with something or the layers of filth that have accumulated over time. As we grow in life and reach somewhere between 40-50 years this is what one is constantly pondering about. We are worried about the layers of cholesterol accumulated in our arteries. We start looking back on our respective lives and try to find out whether it made any sense or not. Have we managed to keep our lives out of filth and maintained it as clean as possible?

You wouldn’t have noticed this but while you were reading the last paragraph …time still was moving. We all make mistakes in life but by the time we realize it, it’s too late because time is still moving and the small sore grows into a cancer. Cancers are to be cut out of the system or else they leave you with lot of pain. So what do we do to the mail here? We cut it off because we know if don’t do it now later its going to trouble us.

I don’t remember where I read it but it went something like this… A person in his later days is like a kid. One has to be taken care of, attended to and is dependent on others even for basic necessities. So where does this leave us? Back to the entire cycle of a nail’s life.

I guess the cleaner we keep our nails the better it’s for our lives.

The Minesweeper Magic

My association with minesweeper started during the training phase in my firm when we were given a task of coding the game using java. My friends used to play minesweeper in college but I never liked it that much. So here I was working on the algo of the game, along with three more java trainees, when my love for this game evolved. Minesweeper is one of the most logical and underrated game. Some people might say that to score a great time in it one needs to have luck, but I disagree.


There are ways to get a cool time in minesweeper and the first step towards it is to stop marking the mines. What I mean by marking is right clicking on the block u feel might have a mine in it. Once you get rid of this habit half the job is done as it saves considerable time of yours. Initially you might find it uncomfortable as you have to keep a mental note of where the mines are but down the line it comes very handy.

The remaining part of the job is to practice. Minesweeper is like any other sport, once you get the technique right then its all about practice. The other aspect of the game, which you will get to know when u start playing it, is that it’s highly addictive. The continuous drive to beat your own time keeps you glued to the system. There is another vital ingredient to get a good time in minesweeper, it’s the Mouse.

If there was a minesweeper contest the best players wouldn’t necessarily win as getting the feel of the mouse is very important to get a decent time on the clock. My experience with minesweeper has shown that when the mouse starts to feel as an organ of your body your chances of cracking the best time increases. With practice you will start to see the pattern in the mine arrangement which helps a lot in unraveling the grid.

As minesweeper is available in all pc’s and there is no volume ingredient associated with it, it’s a great game to pursue during office hours and which I’m sure many people do. I hope my tips come in handy…happy minesweeping…

Ad-ache

Do Ads on TV irritate you? They do irritate me a lot, esp. the sick ads like the pepsi tv one. I personally feel there should be a half hour programme, like we have for movie trailers, for commercials too.What really pisses me off is the fact that in the first place they are so idiotic secondly they get repeated every other minute.

I guess the TV channels are to be blamed too. They air these irritating ads without understanding the sensitivity of the program being aired. Take for instance the recently concluded India-W.Indies One day series. India was getting belted left and right on the pitch every over and the only respite that we viewers had from the gory sight was the break between each over. Now why would I want to see three jokers jumping around and a babe advising them to have “Pepsi” when my team is being massacred on field?

Actually the Ad is misleading, when the telecast retuned to the on-field action I saw Kaif gulping ‘Aquafina’ and not any soda. Why can’t Pepsi advertise ‘Aquafina’, isn’t it their product too? I guess one should sue the likes of Pepsi for misleading the mass that players drink Pepsi, because they don’t. If they did they would be couch potatoes like the ones sitting and watching them play.

Pepsi Tv isn’t the only useless Ad around, there are many. The one that is eating up all the Ad time on Tv nowadays is of the AMITY school. In it, this guy has this ambition of making the leaning tower of Pisa straight. What nonsense is it? Why aren’t the teachers at AMITY telling their students that it’s that inclination that makes it a wonder and secondly it’s taking the government of Italy millions of dollars each year and lots of researchers to keep it from falling, let alone keeping it straight?

These things depress me a lot. What happened to the good old Ads that doordarshan used to air? Ek chidiya anek chidiya, the Nirma ad of deepika ji and their likes. Is creative talent in India dying or do Ad agencies think the viewer is a complete moron? I guess as a retaliation to their torture we should boycott all the products of Pepsi and let these firms know that the viewer can no longer take their nonsense. We can intensify the effect by buying the products of their rival, Coca-Cola.

Now that will surely burst the bubbles of Pepsi…kya behuda channel hain?

Reservation hoopla

It was a normal friday evening,having filled the weekly timesheet I was busy gathering my friends to go for karting at Runway9.The plan was set that we would meet outside the office permises at 7 and leave together.So there I was in front of my office and none of the junta turned up.I gave them a buzz and found out that they were standing in some human chain in front of our software park.

I don't have any strong stand when it comes to politics as I feel its void of common sense.Anyways I saw my friends,each carrying a candle,standing soulder to shoulder in the human chain.There was lot of enthusiasm in the air,partly because of the slogans being chanted by the people gathered and partly because of the TV cameras covering the event.As all my friends were busy here, I too thought of spending some time there.

As the time passed I started to wonder,do such demonstrations have any effect? Does our show of solidarity with the students mean anything when the people molesting the law aren't showing any and won't? I was searching for answers to these questions when this idea struck me.

The main issue that this reservation hoopla has brought to the forefront is the lack of sensible people in the government.We call ourselves intelligent but are we really?
I feel the castes that have the maximum say in the government are the most intelligent of the lot.If you see the political parties the majority of the party members will be from the so-called backward classes.So when they have spent so much time to get into the system and use it to their benefit,I feel they have every right to do so.

We,the forward class as they say,should not crib about reservations when we haven't given a thought all these years on running the government and guiding the nation towards the future.The people in the government have done that in whatever shitty way they felt was right.So if you feel reservation is bullshit then so be it because...SHIT happens.

Relief at last...

After around a month of scroching summer,Hyderabad got rains yesterday.I was back at my place by 4 pm and it started to pour at 5,my joblessness came to the rescue again. Its not that I don't like getting wet in the rain but I would rather prefer a mild drizzle than a down pour.This precisely is the reason why I love to go to Pune during the monsoons.Its a mild rainfall there always,the drops of rain caress you rather than hitting you.

Anyways here I was in my room watching the tube when the power failed.I was thankful that the power failed otherwise I would have wasted the lovely evening surfing channels.I picked up a novel,which is my instinctive reaction when power fails,and went to the porch to njoi the view. Just when I thought wow!!! what a great evening,it became better.My landlady got me a steaming cup of tea.

What else can a man ask for,barring females :),a great rainy evening with books and a hot cup of tea .I wouldn't have minded a plate of hot pakoras but then it was too much to ask from my landlady.I hope this great weather continues and the power fails in the evenings so that I can have this dream again and again.

The kite runner...

What can I say about The kite runner? READ IT!!!

A beautifully written novel that encomapasses a wide range of emotions right from a child's desperate quest for his dad's approval to the anguish of a grown up.The novel keeps you captivated right from the start and there is never a dull moment.The transition of Afghanistan from the 70's to its present state can be picturised as you take this journey with the kite runner.

Kudos to Khalid Hosseini for putting emotions into words so well.Its been a long time since someone has done that.The author,unlike most Indian ones,has used simple language to depict something so complex.




If you have read Vikas Swarup's 'Q&A' and enjoyed it then you surely will love 'The kite runner'.Both have almost the same pace and the crispness that forbids you to drop the book before you have finished it.

Back from Hibernation...

Dear blog reader (I doubt if anyone wastes his time on mine),I'm back from my hibernation.A lot has happened during this sleepy phase, my making it to IIM C was just one of them.

Things change when u make it to renouned institutes.Life changes a bit and its all attributed to the fact how people's view change about you when they hear you have made it to an IIM.Though I'm still as jobless as I was before cracking CAT,my peers feel I might upto something big by playing pool the entire day :D.

The day finally arrived (9th of may) when I put in my papers in my firm.Its a great feeling when u have put in ur papers,you can enjoy your life to the max. and if ur managers asks you to work you can brush him aside saying you have quit and won't work.I didn't get the luxury of trying it out as I didn't have any work in the first place :).

Now that I'm back,I hope to be a bit more active when it comes to updating my blog :)>