Holi-Day

It was the first sincerely played Holi for me. When I was a child, I  loved wetting others with my small pichkari. In school, I used to run and hide and somehow always escape with minimum damages. This boring routine continued in college too.

But, this time it was different: I wanted to play Holi voluntarily. So me and Karlos, decided to start a new conversation thread on gmail devoted to calling and asking people of our gang to come to college, though Karlos himself did not come. What would you call it: double-crossing, back-stabbing or what. He has a lot of explaining to do…

I had some other works too(read project with ANG sir) and thus, I came early(read 10) and went straight to his room. While I was writing abstract(somehow it is the most important thing of a paper) with sir, time flew. Then I thought, well lets see, Is there any class going on today? So, I take leave of sir, at 11:30, to go straight to class. I had not even entered the class, that wicked comes from behind and start throwing balloons at me. He threw 2 and the third burst open since we were both trying to get it. Then there were other things like Pushy bursting my own balloon into me with a big blow of his hand on my stomach. I was out of breath for whole 2 minutes. Then there was Himanshu bursting an egg on my head(yuck! the only thing I was upset about, since I am a veggie), Ganja starting with pakke colors on me. Then I was in, and Holi started.

The next 2 hours were spent plotting, running after new-comers, using different types of colors on people. Worse was the fate of new-comers, nearly all of us came to get them.

Some interesting instances :

1. Wicked : We are armed with AK-47s(we had pakke colors) while they (Varun and Party) are still playing with handguns(gulal). Lets get them.   

2. Mukki makes an entry in Nescafe campus (all black) without his spectacles looking an exact twin of AP.

3. Anubhav comes with a high-tech sprayer for colors which threw some blue soap sortta meterial which was eventually used in making beards of people.

4. Pushy showing off his six-packs. Pushy lifting me up on his shoulders… I hadn’t realised how tall he is, till now. I think it will be nice to be him, getting a helicopter view of everything.

5. Me coming back after washing some color and Oye coming from behind to put more on my recently cleaned face. I should have guessed his intentions while he was musing: “Tu toh jaldi saaf ho gaya”.

6. Assim was taking a photo with his digicam which has multiple face recognition algo in it and while the cam detected all other faces, it did not detect Santy’s face. Well I must say it was not camera’s fault, since his face was all black. But Assim in any case found a bug in the software.

Then after all this, we go to play cricket. And I have a realisation. I am the worst cricket player ever in the history of NSIT. I knew I am bad, but did not know that I am the worst. I made only 3 runs in 3 innings while running out my partner twice and dropping 3 catches in 3 matches. It was miserable(for me only though), the matches were otherwise good and close with lots of haggling over rules in between.

So at the end, we were all tired, could not remove the colors from our faces even after soaping them for long. So we trudged back to home. And, in the bus, getting some of the strangest looks. There was this one decent-looking guy, who kept staring and staring. He was sitting some 2-3 rows back, otherwise, maybe I would have confronted him with: “Have you never played holi, well I hadn’t too, until today that is”.

I come back home, and my mom is pleasantly surprised. She says, “I always thought you were afraid of colors.” Here are some pictures of this wonderful day below

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Qualities One Should Have

Philosophical Post

I have always pondered a lot about what is the most important quality a person should have. Often I used to zero in on intelligence, hard-work, seriousness/discipline, truthfulness and honesty in the past. These are the qualities, that our books and our elders tell us to imbibe. But I don’t think that one should strive for only these things. They are important too, but I don’t think that these are primary. These are all secondary things.

There is another set of qualities that are even more important. Those are courage, respect and curiosity.

The most important thing a person should have is courage. One should be courageous in face of adversity, meet challenges head on, never buckle under pressure and should be able to draft into uncharted territories with courage. Whenever, you are going through tough times, people ask you to “Be Brave”. Follow it always in life.

And to tell you a secret, I am not at all brave.

The next important thing is Respect. One should have respect for oneself and others. Never be disrespectful to anyone, including yourself. This includes under-estimating yourself/others. Mocking your/other person’s intelligence or honour. 

I sometimes fail on this account too, but I try not to.

Lastly, one should never lose the curiosity in one’s life. It leads to many unexpected discoveries and joys around you.

My curiosity has dampened over the years.

I will try to imbibe these three qualities. Tell me your views on this(if you manage to read till here and did not already leave the page :) )

Creating Money Out of Nothing!

DISCLAIMER: I am not a student in economics, neither do I profess to know anything about credit, debit, contracts, foreclosure, currency rates, stocks, bonds etc. This blog post only documents the stuff I have learnt from some videos and it might be instructional to ignorants like me.

Let me start with the question: What is Money?

Well in the old days of the barter system, anything you had which was in demand by other people constituted money eg. if you had wheat, it represented money. Then in the times of kings and queens, gold represented money. Why? Because all knew how hard it is to mine gold and thus it was valuable.

What is money today?

It is paper. I will tell you a story before illustrating how stupid this concept of money is.

One of my early childhood memory is: One day while I was doing shopping with my mama, I saw, that while the doodhwala(milkman) gave huge amount of milk(it was hard to carry, I tried!) and lots of notes and lot of coins, my mama gave him just one single note. I remarked to everybody after coming home, that our doodhwala is stupid. And they laughed and explained to me the concept of money. They explained that the same amount of paper can represent different values of money. Now when that notion was disturbing and counter-intuitive to even a child, why is it not disturbing to all of us. (It was disturbing to me because I still did not know how to print numbers on paper)

A person who claims himself to be authority can start cutting trees, making paper, put random values on it and then distribute it to people in return for some of their goods. Or if they have nothing to give in return, this benevolent person can give them this paper for free! Only if they promise to return it back to him some time later, but with interest i.e. more paper. Its only fair they say, because you got the money for free! Though they forget, that there is only one person making money the whole time. So if I borrow money from him and keep it safe, I will need to steal someone else money to pay back the interest and the original amount. If I fail, I will need to give my lands to the benevolent person and work for him for the rest of my life.

One might argue that cutting trees and making paper is hard work too. Well, that is true, but since that person can put any ridiculously high value on the paper, he can cheat you into giving more goods to him. Remember the story. And moreover, in today’s digital world, you don’t even need paper, since today almost 97% of the total money resides in computers! So, all in all, with the invention of computers, this seemingly benevolent person who distributes money to all the needy people just needs to type it all in his computers. Hard work indeed!

Now, you might want to know, who is this lucky person. A person who creates money by typing. Well that lucky person is your friendly neighbourhood international bank. They distribute money to the governments, large corporations and in turn people frequently for free! And when those people are not able to give back the original sum along with some more(remember interest), since they were not able to steal enough, bank takes away their lands and turn them into slaves(means they are bankrupt or more appropriately robbed by banks). They call this: “The Fractional Reserve Banking System”.

To summarize, I will leave you with this staggering ironic thought:

If all the people on this planet paid off every single dollar they owe to the banks, there would be no money left in circulation on this planet.

My New Year Resolutions

Caution : This post is strictly about me and my new year resolutions. So, you might find this ultra-boring and purely worthless. Proceed with care…

1. Go to gym everyday

2. Do not trust anybody with my job and have expectations over its result. I have done this a lot with a lot of people in the past year and I understand this after a long long time that when you have got to do something, do it yourself. If you do entrust a job to someone, have absolutely no expectations about it.

3. Try to be alert at all times. Do not switch off my brains and let myself live in an auto-mode.

4. Above all never ever forget your friends… Do not let these precious friendships drift away while you get busy with other “stuff”

Hope I follow my resolutions, although some say that resolutions ought to be private, I am making them public in the hope that some of my friends will put me on the right path whenever I do not follow these…

Ghajini in Rs 10

Today I had my best experience of watching movie and that too the cheapest I would have ever watched. In Rs. 10 only!!!

Ghajini is awesome because of Aamir and I am now a very very big fan of Aamir. His acting is so believable, his expressions always so apt, never too much neither too less. The screenplay is awesome, story – well it has a lot of holes, and coming from a South Indian Director, the climax fight is very much like Rajnikanth. But the movie has a lot of action, comedy and drama… a perfect film just because of Aamir and Kalpana(I don’t remember the real name of the South Actress, but she was so cute…, Jia was terrible both in looks and acting) . Now, that I have given decent lip-service(well it deserves a lot more, but hey I am tired and need to tell a story) to the film.

Actually, we were all very excited of watching this movie, but sadly on 25th all the tickets were booked at PVR till 28th. So, this time, we went to a multiplex hall in Miapur where tickets are very cheap. Although, we reached at 5:00 and there were two shows: 6:00 and 6:15 . But sadly both got “house full” and the next show was 9:15. The hall is in Miapur, where there is no place to hang out at(well there was a very dirty pond in between, but nobody wanted to take a dip in it :P) , and very heated debates were going on about whether we want to go to Microsoft or to the guest House. Microsoft held the promise of gym and lawn tennis and of course work!! While Guest house held a warm, soft bed ready for us.

Now, we were just outside, when this gentleman comes to us and says that he can arrange 6 tickets. It was the same gentleman whom we had asked how to spend 4 hours in this place! Sadly, we were 8 guys and some were all for doing katta of Mukki and Shekhu. (They were coming in another auto and had not reached by then).  Anyways, Jitesh and Anshul took the initiative to enquire for the possibility of arranging 2 more tickets in black. They go to a counter where they are selling tickets of Rs. 10 each. These are all front seats(ok chairs) and there is no guarantee that you will get seats, you might have to sit on floor or stand. But we were desperate. We bought 8 tickets and went through the main gate. Usually you don’t see 8 decent looking dudes with Rs 10 tickets in hands, so the security people allowed us in. (There is another line of Rs 10 tickets which is outside the hall.) But we went into the hall early and thus got seats.

Now, the atmosphere inside the hall was awesome… better than Vishal I must say. There were whistles, shouts, and we could express our emotions ah… freely! Hey even Jitesh expressed himself so, you can understand, how the atmosphere took us all in.

I got an IMAX Feel while watching the movie from so near. It was totally a great experience… Hey even a CD costs more than 10 bucks… and we watched a 200 rupees worth film in Rs 10.

I have nothing to talk about!!!!

Its amazing, but I finally have nothing to talk about!

I don’t want to talk about my first week at Microsoft since if I talk about my project, I will be violating my NDA and if I talk about the amount of masti I am doing here(there is always a chance that somebody from my team might read it!).

I don’t want to talk about the warm weather of Hyderabad. This is because the topic is so uninteresting, you can always check out the weather of a city from the internet and know about it. What’s the use of blogging about it.

I don’t want to talk about the excursions and general experiences at Hyderabad, since I am already sharing a lot of pictures on Orkut starting today and as a picture is worth a thousand words, I don’t think I have the patience to write a thousand words.

I don’t want to talk about my recent brush with Gym, since if I write about it this time too and I don’t go there regularly, I won’t be able to face others. Its too much of a shame to talk about something that you are going to do and you end up not doing it. I made this mistake once, not going to make it twice.

I don’t want to talk about my roommate Mukul, since he is a gem as always. Neither do I want to talk about the intern gang at MS, well, what’s there to talk about… we are having fun!!!

I don’t want to talk about my guest house and the house hunting experience as the guest house is great as always and the house hunting is painful as always, though we found one this time a bit tooo early.

I don’t want to talk about how I lost my purse with my college ICard, driving license and a thousand bucks once again(if you are wondering about the word “again”, it is the third time I lost my icard!!) and how I found it because of the honest and responsible MS Security Guys.

So, in short, I have nothing to talk about and am totally blank as to what to say… but looking back and re-reading the whole post, I have talked about “everything” in this post… well now that’s a perfect example of a head-fake.

Writing in Air!!

 

I got this idea of writing the blog post while I am in the plane. This is my 5th flight but I am still excited. So, this is how I will pass my time(yea yea its a lame way to pass time but well I did not get a window seat!!) I am on-board the plane and we are ready to take off after a delay of around an hour due to fog[Why are winters starting when I am leaving Delhi :( ]

For a brief amount of time, I had to switch off the laptop while taking off. The flight finally started at around 11 AM(Scheduled start was 9:25) and now we are in the clouds! A very interesting and pleasant person is sitting next to me who is a plastic surgeon also moving to Hyderabad. Now he is busy reading the magazine while I am listening to Coldplay and the cabin noise. Guess I have never been a good talker, hope I write better! And how I wish I had those Bose Noise Cancelling head phones that I saw the demo off just yesterday.

Hey, struck up another conversation, but I guess I am getting good at boring people since now the window is closed, both my neighbors are sleeping and I am typing on the laptop. I never knew a flight could be boring… Actually I asked him what does he think of Michael Jackson? I don’t know but he did not look pleased with the question!!!

And after the first half hour of writing, I gave this up as a bad job and you are now left to read what I wrote, since this is going to be published anyway.

Ciao….

Past, Present, Future

 

(Inspired By The Dead Poets’ Society)

Lets forget the past

bury it under deep seas

in a box with a lock

which has no keys.

 

Lets look towards the future

with a sparkle in our eyes,

with a rhythm in our walks

with our heads touching the high skies.

 

 

 

Lets live the present

like an athlete on a marathon run

with his focus only on the current step

forgetting the heat and scorching sun. 

A Disconnected Stream of Thoughts

My theory exams have finished and I think I did well with them. But, today, I do not want to talk about them or about me, I have always talked about myself in the blog. If you do the “I” count in any of the posts of this blog, you will find it surprisingly high. That’s because it is a Cat Blog. 

But today, I want to talk about the Mumbai Blasts, which have presented the ugly face of terrorism to the whole world by killing more than 200 people. It was a brave operation by NSG Commandos swooping down on the rooftops through helicopters, clearing the hotels off the terrorists floor by floor and rescuing over 200 hostages from both the hotels. But despite the bravery of the rescue operation and killing of the all the f***ing murdering terrorists, this incident has left a lot to be desired from the Government of India.

There have been a number of blasts in India in the past two years in various parts of the country but this topped it all. It has led to all the foreign countries issuing travel advisories to not to go to India. It has led to the resignation of the Home Minister of India, State Chief Minister and State Home Minister of Maharashtra. It has led to angry and seething responses from the bloggers community. It has led to various questions being asked by the citizens of the country about the security measures. It has led to India estranging ties with Pakistan yet again… (though I sincerely hope something comes out this time as I don’t think India has the guts to bomb Pakistan.)

Though if Pakistani media is to be believed, India blowed up their own best hotels in order to put the blame on Pakistan. If the report is to be believed, America did the same with the WTO Towers to go to war with Afghanistan. Just looking at the amount of negative and false propaganda through youtube going on at the other side of the fence seems amazing. Another youtube video which is worth looking for is our Prime Minister’s response to the nation after the attacks. Look at this post titled: “Finally A Truly Scary Movie” to know what I am talking about.

Although talking of media, I think that sometimes some of our own news channels have been very insensitive in covering the whole incident. Here is one adapted version of a letter sent by a friend of mine to a national daily newspaper feeling distressed with the same.

I cant sleep tonight. I keep thinking about the families of those killed at Mumbai and that doesn’t include the families of the people committing these cowardly acts. I am not aware of what jihad is,I am not aware of their reason to kill but I am sure that it is strong enough as they are willing to give their lives for it. But I see no bravery in it.
       The thing that troubles me most about the media's response to the attacks is its presentation. Today I heard a TV correspondent on Aaj Tak saying, " Atankvaadi apne sir pe kafan baand ke aate hain" (Terrorists come with their hearts in their hands). I understand the "bravery" involved in committing the attacks but one thing that needs to be highlighted is that unarmed  people were shot at. The innocent ones died. I fail to understand why doesn't the media focus on the cowardliness of the attacks, why is it taken to be understood.
       Why only the signs and videos at metro stations repeatedly reminds us of the precautionary measures we need to take. Why doesn't the media take that initiative? Instead they like to say lines such as: "Aatankvaadi khule aam sadko pe ghum raha hai"(Terrorists roam around freely on the streets). " Jab ek aadmi ghar se nikalta hai, to usse pata nahi hota ki aaj vo sahi salamat ghar vapas pahochega ke nahi".(When a person leaves his home, he is not sure if he will come back unharmed). The attackers are instigating terror, but who is propagating it?
Television media is bent on instigating curiosity rather than awareness, the term responsibility is moving farther and farther away from it. Some form of media has to take initiative to stop what television media is doing -- propagating terror through incompetent, irresponsible and profit driven reporting of sensitive events.

I guess, looking back at the whole post, it is a disconnected stream of thoughts. But I will not edit it, since it portrays the disoriented state of mind I am in with regards to the events in the recent past. But, I have finally got the Title of the post with this… As always, feel free to comment.  

Diminishing Human Self Esteem

I think that the Human Self Esteem has been lowering as the new technology is coming up. Firstly, the humans believed themselves i.e. Earth to be the center of the universe. But to their utter dismay, astrologists proved that earth revolves round the center of sun and even Sun is not the center of the universe.

We used to believe ourselves to be different from Animals but Charles Darwin came and proved that we are the direct descendents of monkeys and are no different from animals. Infact, modern research has proved that only a few thousand genes (less than 1% of the total genes) make us different from them. Everyday new genes are being identified for certain characteristics, traits, qualities and diseases to make you believe that you are nothing more than a bio-chemical machine.

We considered ourselves to be intelligent, but a Computer was made to beat the best chess player of the world. Computers are getting better and better at stuff we thought only, we, the sentient beings were capable of doing. With the advent of self-learning machines, I think, it will be the biggest blow to our self esteem. The thing which we pride ourselves with, is the ability to learn(the reason why we are intelligent), but we find that computers can do that too. Self-learning machines are present everywhere. The most popular example of them being the AIBO Robots released by Sony. Others being machine based language translation, speech recognizers, search engines, handwriting recognition, game playing etc.

We consider ourselves different because we have emotions but recently a robot was made which is able to have facial expressions and emotions. Although, it is a prototype, but a very good one at that.

So, what are we, are we special creatures with souls or are we just another advanced form of self-learning machine. Well that remains to be seen, but seeing the advancement in self-learning systems, I find myself tilting towards the second option. Though, I would still like to believe in the first option…

Rejuvenated Me

 

I have been laying dormant over the past 2 weeks both on the blog and also in my daily life. The enthusiasm with which I greeted the online world was diminishing day by day and had come to an all time low. So, here I am again back with the same old enthusiasm to start taking up the activities which I had been avoiding over this period.

I have often seen in the past 2 months, that my daily enthusiasm towards life is directly proportional to the amount of blog posts per week. Although, it might seem weird, but this is a fact. I got to realize this only yesterday while talking to a friend and something was said which brought me to realize how apathetic I was becoming. Now my friend does not even have the slightest idea about it and I do not wish to enlighten as some thoughts are best kept private. 

So, starting today, I will be back with the same old enthusiasm towards blogging and life in general. I will again take my old activities with same old rigour and passion. Happy Diwali to all of you…

Why I Love Cartoons

Cartoons are a very simple way to portray human emotions in a loud and a fun manner. I mean, look at any cartoon, their smile is always bigger, when they cry buckets of water flow out, their voice often betrays their fear and emotions and they are so damn funny. A human can never act it like a cartoon, cartoons live in wonderous worlds, do impossible stunts while never getting hurt, don't need any laws of physics and no special effects too. They are only limited only by the imagination of their creator.

Its not just me! Every-body loves them, that why Disney is raking millions these days with Wall-E and Finding Nemo like cartoon films. India too is getting its share of animation with the films like Hanuman and the latest one - a love story by cartoons. Japanese have always known the secret of cartoons, its the rest of the world which has been slow to catch up on the fact that a drawing is often better than real actors.

If you disagree with the above statement, it is not you who is disagreeing but it is your ego that was hurt by the above statement. We feel that since we humans are the best, it is we whom we would like to see. But tell me, aren't you bored by seeing humans all around you day in and day out. We have already eliminated most of the other animals from this planet, and the rest are all locked up in zoos. So, when I go out for a movie, or switch on a TV, heck, I don't wanna see someone like me all over again (Note this doesn't mean I won't admire beauty, sadly not found in cartoons, on TV and movies :P).

Also, cartoon movies have been changing to reflect the change in times. So, times have changed from the Spinach eating Popeye was popular during the times of food shortage in World War II to robots in love with each other and saving the humans from self-destruction in Wall-E. The themes have progressively changed from focussing mainly on cat and mouse stories of Tom and Jerry to now include robots and inanimate objects to fairies, mythological gods and ofcourse humans.

So, I can only feel bouyant about the future as I will get to watch many more cartoon flicks despite my child-hood days over a long time back :). What do you feel about them?