Saturday 29 December 2012

The Vacation Cancer

Do you feel hungry and bored all the time? Do you want to learn new things but still continue in the inertia of 'velaness'? Do you miss the campus but on further contemplation find out that it's just the Oreo-shake that's making you nostalgic? Do you wake up at 2:00 am to eat and have cold-coffee only to find people staring oddly at you? Does your family make you feel uncomfortable by interrogating you about the sensex-ual curves of your CGPA? Do you reluctantly bath daily under parental and societal pressure?

Yes. You have been diagnosed of the vacation-cancer.

When I entered my home I was greeted with 347 different versions of the line, 'Kitna patla ho gaya hai!' and since then, have been continuously stuffed with every edible thing available in the house like a Thanksgiving turkey. My relatives commented that the 'educational burden' might be the reason for my supposed weight-loss and almost killed me of guilt. I have countless times narrated my weekly-4-course-mess-menu in different houses at different gatherings on different occasions for different reasons. And believe me, the menu really sounds interesting when described in the right tone with the right gestures.

The cold in Chhattisgarh is biting like a rabid dog. (Yeah, I live there and contrary to popular opinion, am not a Tribal or a Naxalite.) #Bonus Chhattisgarh Fact: People here do wear clothes and sweaters.

In other news, those mischievous Mayans turned out to be legendary trolls and their calendar has been nominated for the 'Best Practical Joke Cracked Before Christ' award. 'Aaj Tak' and 'India News' together made a record of being proved wrong 10001 times. And thus apocalypse has been indefinitely postponed without further notice.

As it miraculously happens every year, my birthday this time too, coincided with the winter vacations. And I feel lucky for having it out-of-campus for the intense fear of the brutal ceremony of throwing the B'day Boy in air and kicking his ribs till he can count all the vertebral bones individually by the pain each one causes. I always wonder why such an evil ritual has such a cute name- 'Birthday Bumps', which should be actually called something like- 'Banging the bladder out of that blockhead till he turns black and blue'.

This tradition also gives much scope for revenge. Take this dialogue for example-
B'day Boy (mid-air with a shoe penetrating into his back)- Do you know that guy who just stabbed me in my chest and said 'Happy Bithday Bro' ?
Friend (yes, it is his shoe)- No. But you once told me that you got a mark more than him in Thermo in the 1st sem

But I surely missed that chocolate cake that my friends would affectionately buy and then dramatically forget that mouth is the hole anatomically assigned for food intake, and end up smearing the cake all over my face.

I have successfully aged beyond my teenage and have already started giving you-undisciplined-arrogant teenagers-look to the younger people. I also have with great maturity switched my loyalties from Dexter, the cartoon-scientist to Dexter, the serial-killer. I am now capable of solving critical problems of life like, 'Shahi or Night-mess?' and have also, with great mental labor, figured out that I am not supposed to write- 'Nothing Much :P' when FB asks me 'What's going on, Suprabhat?' instead of asking, 'What's on your mind?' But yet, I sometimes feel that I still am just a sweet innocent kid deep inside (who laughs at vulgar jokes)

Moving on, there have been other misfortunes happening in the society. Yes, I am talking about that Delhi incident that is splashed all over the news, where a guy confessed that he thought R.I.P. written on the graves actually meant 'Raping In Paradise'. To cut the long story short, we, sadly, have not been respecting Darwin much, lately.

But before I break into a melodramatic moral speech, let me cut-short with the message- 'Enjoy your Holidays', or as the CS guys say: learn C++, C#, Java, Python, CSS, XML, HTML, ASP, Django, Javascript......







Friday 23 November 2012

F******K!

Have you read that paper they give you at the end of the classes nowadays with jokes scribbled all over it?
If not, you better take a look (which you eventually will) because this is the most hilarious thing I have seen in the campus, after the CSA-election agendas of course.

Yeah! You got it! Give yourself a hi-fi! (Even if that's weird.) I am talking about the "Feedback" forms. But I am one of the rare ones who have been trusted with the deeply buried secret of what they are going to do with those poor papers. These manuscripts, carrying explosive truths, will be shredded into microscopic pieces, then rotten by lustful and sadistic bacteria till they turn into bio-gas, which will be finally sealed off mercilessly in a cylinder and blasted to blue flames to roast a chicken in a smoldering oven in our cafeteria.

Or I have been watching too many animes lately.

But seriously who cares? I mean, the administration. The nerds would be merry even if Wall-E were teaching. (And I'm sorry for that inappropriate reference because Wall-E is way more expressive, entertaining and enthusiastic than half of my teachers, but then, it thinks about garbage all the time!) And the rest of the students would anyway attend all the classes. Provided the teacher distributes doughnuts, drinks and droids at the end of each discussion.

Now, for the sake of those who didn't get to see the form; it consists of 18 one-liners that are provided with 6 circles each, to rate the humor-quotient, ranging from NA to 5. And for all who want to pictorially depict your affection and respect for the instructor, there is a blank frame provided at the end where you can draw your instructor sitting on a unicorn, riding over rainbows over the B-Dome, and drawing clouds and thunder with chalk. Or you can just write a classy Yo-mama joke. And for all the obvious reasons one can find in this universe, you are not asked to write your identity.

Now, here are some questions, in random order, I would like to highlight-

Q.) Lectures are interactive, questions are encouraged and doubts are effectively clarified.
A.) Absolutely yes. Like the time I asked my Maths Prof how to solve the partial differential equation, involving spatial dimensions and time, governing the free undamped oscillations of an elastic beam, clamped at one end. And he was all like, "Oh boy! My five-year old son can solve it using separation-of-variables method!" Or perhaps he was simply referring to his mathematically enhanced genes which even have the chromosomes looking like the variables 'x' and 'y'.

Q.) Instructor communicates effectively. (consider grammar, clarity and audibility)
A.) Firstly, I didn't know that these many things are to be 'considered' while speaking as the only concern, we below-poverty-line-in-grammar people have while we speak, is making every sentence sound cool. Like when my friend asked me, "Hey bro! You wanna hit mess dude bucks shit yo?"

Q.) Instructor uses presentation tools (blackboard, slides, models where applicable) effectively.
A.) *thinking about FTV*

Q.) Lectures are interesting and engaging, arousing curiosity in me to learn advanced topics.
A.) Excuse me Mam.... Mam, where is the "I laughed so hard I probably will never be constipated again" option?

Q) Instructor is enthusiastic and original in his/her presentation and problem solving approach.
A) Enthusiastic? Yes, like I am, about my compre-exams. Original? Yes, like I am, in my open-book exams.

Q.) % of classes attended by you.
A.) I didn't count but I swear it's around 100.

Q.) Difficulty level of the questions asked in the evaluation components is commensurate with what is taught in the class.
A.) LOL! ROFLMAO! What's 'commensurate' ?

Q.) I look upon the instructor, as a capable counselor with regard to academic, career and personal matters.
A.) I get nightmares of doing stand-up comedy in the Placement Office, while the company people laugh hysterically. Oh wait! I am actually reading my CG card to them. (No. I wouldn't like to share this with my Prof.)

Q.) The instructor's overall professional conduct is worthy of emulation.
A.) Well such an instructor is like Kasab's hanging. Most of us didn't see it.

Q.) Evaluation is fair and transparent.
A.) Yeah, totally. In fact '0' is the most transparent numeral ever invented!

There are many other questions but obviously I have no clue about those, as I failed to attend many classes due to the time-taking psychology-project I am working on, that involves analyzing the contradictions to the Aristotelian logic displayed in the trailer of "Khiladi 786" and making a detailed report on, why killing the movie's story-writer, music-composer, actor and singer, Himesh Reshammiya, would get Obama a second and more deserving Nobel Peace Prize.

On a totally unrelated note, I would also like to add that I deeply respect and honor this noble profession of teaching. Because teaching is like a miniature version of Big-Boss: being in a closed room surrounded by a bunch of arrogant idiots; assault and murder isn't allowed; and there is some bigger ass sitting somewhere, continuously supervising you. So, it really requires a lot of patience and determination to teach us dumb people, constantly fighting the strong urge to hack and kill. Hence respect teachers and pay attention in the classes and be serious and silent while the class is being taught. If you don't want to end up dead in some gutter, that is.

And yes, fill the Feedback Form seriously. It's fun!       

Friday 16 November 2012

The Whole E-Matrimony

The big things in life are free.
Just like my fake account in Jeevansathi.com

So, one day my friend barged into my room and said, "I am sufficiently tired of being 'friends' with total strangers and now is the time to quit screwing around in FB and do something thought-provoking, something real, something more mature." And then we created my fake profile. But, I don't want to give free publicity to this match-fixing site so, me being a chemical engineer, let's call it A1sathi.com.

I am very proud to mention that my profile has got 89 views, which is like 89 times the number of views my blog has got. And, this matrimonial alter-ego of mine, named 'Supramanyam', has got a BE Chemical degree (yeah, I never lie about my roots) and an ME in I.S. (Information Systems) from Stanford. But, I can bet on the cheesy looking couple on the website (that look so glad, as if the husband owns a Kingfisher villa and the wife owns a make-up box, the size of the villa) that ladies are going crazy just over the I.S. part.

Anyhow, it's quite obvious, isn't it; because of the love people have for the things starting with the letter 'I' (subconscious egocentrism, maybe).  Some justifying examples here are- I.I.T, I.I.M, I.T, I.A.S, I.Q, IMAX, I-series-Intel-processors, I-whatever-shit-Apple-makes, I-pill... oops, that came out wrong (no, that isn't a tagline, perverts!)

And, I did one more extraordinarily clever thing; that is, didn't upload my photo. Now, that doesn't mean I am bat-shit-ugly, but, why not let their imaginations run wild! Especially when in this age of obesity, imagination is the only thing that can venture running. I also filled out various other details like my salary, hobbies, caste, creed, dimensions etc with slight exaggeration, as the final output is a person, who looks as big as Big-B, is a thinner and richer version of Lord Kuber, indulges in philosophical stuff like reading Bible, Gita, Koran etc and also preaches that these books essentially say the same thing- we suck!

Now, this one particular day was the turning point in my life, when my profile got its first hit and I got a mail saying, "XYZ, who is ethnically-blah-blah-blah, is interested in you." I was so overwhelmed that I melted into tears and sobbed with ecstasy, because, the last time the humanity seemed interested in me was when I got a game-request of 'Ninja or Nun' on Facebook.

So, I started reading the profiles of various didis and aunties. (Yes, I do respect women even when I am stalking their matrimonial profiles)The search-tool for profiles in this website is quite similar to Google. Now, I am not saying this because, when I typed "girl who acts like a girl", it replied with "Do you mean a Southie chick?" but because, the lesser the page number, the better the search-results.

Let me explain: the age of the females in the profiles gradually increases from 25 to eternity as you go from page 1 to 100. And I always have this weird vision that if I ever dare to, as much as, click on the 100th page, a shivering and wrinkled hand will reach me from the laptop screen and I'll hear a shaking voice saying, "B...b..beta mere Karan-Arjun nahin aaye beta! Now, I want a new f..f.....family beta!" And yeah, that's very creepy.

Some profiles have been written by the fathers, some by the daughters (I mean, the profile-owners), and some have been co-written. The profiles in the last category always have incredibly smooth transitions to avoid confusion and misunderstanding.                                          

An example, ".....My daughter is a respected, highly educated, good natured and well-mannered girl who is, by a rare celestial coincidence, also very beautiful. She has been brought up in a very good cultural background and with high moral values. I can also cook 5 types of pasta and 11 types of pizza and regularly hit gym to be in perfect shape, which isn't round, LOL. I also am very broadminded as I never care about the cheap comments my colleagues pass at me for having simultaneous love-affairs with my boss, who commands the call-center and my driver, who carries me to the call-center. I also....."                                          

See? You just can't detect that there were two authors to this literary piece.

And then there are profiles that have girls whose qualities-list consists of playing piano, violin, mrudangam, cello, nadaswaram and some 50 other instruments. So, basically in this case, I don't marry. I become the manager of an alternative Carnatic rock band. Now, imagine a daily household conversation-

Me- Honey! I am home. What's for dinner tonight?
She- Raga Hamsadhwani
Me- *speechless, with flute in the background*
She- Now the tabla won't play itself, will it, dear?

And then the scene cuts to the music-room where I am frantically playing Tabla with hunger-fits.

But sometimes I start feeling guilty and sorry; my conscience gets on my nerves, for committing this cheap act of not creating a fake profile featuring a woman, too. Then I would also have an overview of the male profiles in the website and things would be more fun. But it's okay. Supramanyam is managing quite well.

Now, I, being an engineer, have always respected multiple choices even when I had no idea what each of those choices meant; just like this website scenario, where an array of women check out a matrix of men and get interested in each other, quite dramatically. But in these times, when, even the faces that we see outside are masked with hypocrisy and insincerity, how can we believe in a profile pic and description on a random website which could have been created by some weirdo. (Like my friend, for example.) But then, it all boils down to a matter of choice and chance.

And who knows? Supramanyam might eventually land up with a 'sanskari stree' (value-added woman).
*The post ends with a Shehnai melody*








Friday 9 November 2012

Disc- Jockey, Rupa, whatever

Life is a bunch of weird and forgettable experiences. And I had a specially weird one recently.                      

It's called DJ Nite.

DJ Nite  /ˈdēˌjā,nīt/
Noun : A modernistic cultural program led by a person, standing on a high podium with a torture weapon
           called 'turntable', who uses it to repeatedly and mercilessly assault on the fragile eardrums of victims
           who have fallen prey to the tyrannies of electronic music, and calls himself/herself DJ

If you have attended these earlier, you might have spotted an overwhelmingly awkward person staring cynically at the rest of the swaying humanity around and simultaneously doubting the reason of his existence there. Well, that's me.

So, this DJ Nite, (Yes, it's Nite, not Night, because Nite is cooler as it looks 75% like Lite) I am talking about, was so jam-packed with zombies swinging in simple-harmonic motion, that my lungs had to extract O2  from CO2  to avoid asphyxiation. (On a historical note, Hitler's concentration camps were nothing but only-Jews-get-the-passes DJ Nites, conducted in ill-ventilated halls.)

The crowds here are a pervert's paradise, because, the delight of a pervert joyously making a way through the throng, is comparable only to the ecstasy of a child who is lost in a chocolate-cloud, with Pokemons and Doraemon circling him, in Noddy's car, driven by Harry Potter.                                                                              

And this is also a problem for the righteous souls because this high density audience here, may lead to a person catching AIDS, merely by trying to keep his head from fusing into the neighbor's armpits.

Now, coming to the music- I have always, since infancy, fantasized about hearing a robot rape a piano, tuned to high bass in a loudspeaker. It seems, they have now given a name to it. Skrillex. It's almost an aural holocaust, hearing the same tune being played over and over again until your auditory neurons, thankfully, break the loop and you end up deaf. In fact, amputating and stitching together totally unrelated songs seemed more justified to me after hearing this insanity called 'Electronic Dance Music'.

Anyways, to camouflage myself in this musical apocalypse, I desperately tried to dance and ended up looking like a polio patient showing his moves, after being overly inspired by watching Step Up 3D, three times. Then, I slowly disappeared from the place displaying my amateurish ninja-skills and later poured coolants in my ear to dissolve the atrocities faced by it before.

And finally tried my last chance at luck to regain sanity by listening to Coke Studio.




Thursday 25 October 2012

Train (of thought) II

......continued

I stumbled and fumbled with an intent to follow her as as she walked past me towards the vestibule and turned and went to a place where it would be plain illegal for me to follow. And I just stood there shocked and awe-struck. To be frank, she completely ignored me as I stared unsociably at her.

What? Were you expecting a Bollywood-ish hero-heroine intro sequence. Well, then let me remind you once again- I am an engineer (awkward). And I am a blogger (x1000).

Yeah, exceptions exist everywhere and there are various un-printable and fun-speakable titles to honor them, starting from the affectionate "Tharki" to complex ones like "#@%^&!%# " which involve various Freudian aspects. But let's put them aside.

Moreover, we male engineers never have much hormonal activity going on; unless there's a laptop involved. Introduce a laptop in the scene, and then there's a spike... In the hormonal activity.

And that's precisely the reason why girls fake being offline, because we boys, supposedly, sit huddled, like a group of hungry salivating falcons with tongues lolling out and intent eyes piercing the laptop screen, in search of a prey, which is an online-random-'friend'- girl, to swoop at the chat box and dig her brains out by 'boring' conversations.

% Myth-buster: We satisfy our urges and surges just by 'stalking', and during the process, accidentally 'liking'. (The reason for now-20-years-old you, getting a 'like' on your fifth-birthday-cake-pic, with a comment- "awww so sweet :):):):):)" ) And so don't require chatting.

I recently heard a girl saying, "Oh my god! Shameless stalkers. Thank heavens, I get notified every time someone 'follows' my profile." Well, chill out girl. That's called Quora.

Also, as opposed to various rumors floated by Aaj Tak, Software Engineers have not been successful yet in devising a way for crawling through the LAN cables and emerging into someone's laptop screen like an emergency pop-up window. So, feel safe being online. It's a friendly neighborhood.

(This ad, featuring Morgan Freeman's voice, has been issued in the public interest. Conditions applied.) %

There was a person sitting on a berth far off in the other side of the compartment with a bespectacled face and almost bald head staring into his Macintosh. Holy Shit! Steve Jobs. But shouldn't he 'drop out' of the train or something ? I approached him timidly.

He was running a media player as well as a reader side-by-side watching "Hello" (no, you don't know this) and simultaneously reading "One night @ call center" (yes, you know this)
He- "What a disgusting movie!"
Me-"No offense, but the book was crap too!"
He- "Still! This movie is downright diarrhea"
And we giggled at this poop-joke for 5 minutes.
(And my sincere apologies to the readers but, Chetan Bhagat totally looks like Steve Jobs from one rail-coach distance. You can check if you want.)

He- "Engineer, kid?"
Me-"Yeah! Chemical Engineer."
He- "Shit man! The last time I met a Chemical guy, he was all like, 'Bhaiyya. Yeh davaai iss dukaan mein                         nahin milti!' LMFAO"
Me-"Hehe. Yeah. Chemical Engineers and Chemists are totally interchangeable."
He- "Just kidding, bro. Chill out. I meant no offense. Lite. But, on a serious note, what alternative career options have you considered? Coz, you gotta eat something, right?"
Me- "I don't know. What's your secret of success? I mean, you had put your fingers in so many pies and then you blotched tissue papers with your smeared hands and... voila! the Indian 'paperback' king."
He- "See, I didn't know what I loved, so I did everything, courses and degrees and jobs, and shortlisted what I hated and bingo! I got my real calling."
Me- "Writing?"
He- "No. Being a housewife."
Me-"*Sigh* They call even you people Home Engineers these days."
He- "When they can call YOU engineers! LOL. ROFLMAO. This shit is so funny!"
Me- "Okay. But seeing today's trends, almost every engineer is vomiting a novel every alternate day about his oh-so-awesome-I'm-totally-nailing-it engineering life that includes various interesting and thought-provoking elements like mess-food, semester-backs, bunks-and-flunks, placement-heartbreaks and below-poverty-line-CGPA. That's how sad it can get. And there you are, playboy-ing in your college-stories."
He- "Who said so?"
Me-"You yourself. I saw your interviews!"
He- "Exactly. *wink* Dude, I was an IITian. I rest my case."
Me-"*speechless*"
He- "You are, what you write. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll write another novel about this train-meeting, which people will again needlessly go bananas over."


I was just flowing in the reverie when a ground-nut seller hawked the soul out of me.
"Babu, ek idhar dena", I said.
"Who the hell is 'babu'?", the seller scowled.
"What the hell?", was the smartest response I could come up with.
"What?", yeah, he said.
"I... I don't mean anything derogatory towards this noble profession and indeed it plays a key-role in the Indian economy, but why, I mean.... you seem educated. And ground-nut seller?", I zipped my mouth, finally.
"Ground-nut seller? Bitch, I am an entrepreneur", he said, shoving a packet in my trembling hands.
"Huh! Oh!", I said and continued being lame.
To avoid any further awkwardness, I added-
"Well, entrepreneurship is indeed a tough 'nut' to crack" and winked.
He didn't respond.
"And an entrepreneur has to be well-versed with the 'nuts' and bolts of his business" and winked again.
He didn't respond.
"In fact, I sometimes feel like a 'nut' for not trying my hand at start-ups till now"
He responded finally ending the pun-fest saying-
"How would you like your nuts? Salted? Or broken?"

And, I did what I do my third best, slipped away.

Now, this word 'Entrepreneurship' has always confused me. No, not the spelling. (Ignoring the fact that I got it correct the seventh time.) The whole concept is warped in itself. Everyone is an engineer nowadays. But at least it requires a certificate. But entrepreneurship? No, it's too cool for that. And the trouble is, it has infected all the professions and spheres of life.

Let me throw some light on a doctor-patient conversation I recently eaves-dropped into, to justify my point-

Doctor- Sorry to say, but, my scheme, 'Oh patient, Be patient' doesn't cover the treatment of your overly-fragile heart condition, but you can have a free sugar check-up benefit-voucher by donating your sperm at that counter
Patient- *facepalm*

Finally, shaking off all the cluttered thoughts, I wondered why engineers go into all different places starting from one common point; what is so repelling in our syllabus that alters our thought-processes; whether Engineering is more of an eye-opener towards actual interests rather than a course and whether the trailer of "Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola" made sense.

But, let's-face-it, we humans have this inclination to eventually neglect what we have in our hands and gape at the opportunities around (no twisted interpretations please) and I am probably exaggerating a simple phenomenon to a much higher level. And who knows, even I might end up doing something other than Engineering. (Considering my grades, which are skydiving more gracefully than Felix Bumgardener)


And shortly afterwards, I toppled from my bed into a fresh new morning at 3 pm.







  

Sunday 21 October 2012

Train (of thought)

After, updating the last post, I did the noblest task that an engineer performs in the scholarly stage of his life, in graciously large amounts. That is, slept.

And then I was in a train.

(Statutory Warning- No, this blog won't be as cool as Inception or even Source Code for that matter.
In case you were even remotely close to starting to expect.)

I was amidst four head-banging guitarists and exchanged stranger-yet-same-aged-hence-cheery glances and asked them what had gotten into them, I mean, where had they gotten into the train.
"Engineering Station, bro!", came the answer.
"Cool", I said, reluctantly adding "Bro" afterwards and added further- "Are you all some band?"
"No, bro. But we might form one, called 'Spastic Orangutan Constipation'".
"Oh!", I said with pain noticeable in my voice, completely sure, that the image of that tormented ape would never ever leave my mind.

I desperately tried to make a head-and-tail of the title, with the limited amount of usable brain that an engineer is left with, but you know, the poetic shade in the names of rock bands is so deep, that our present narrow-minded dictionaries can't attribute a definite meaning to it.

And, I don't know why, but, a peculiar thought kept occurring to me, of the PETA people head-banging in their concert wearing their favorite protest-costume, nothing (which is coincidentally our favorite too).

And then was shot at me, the icicle of a question, which every engineer chillingly fears-
"Do you know playing the Guitar, bro?"


(Contrary to popular beliefs, we engineers follow certain professional ethics and avoid asking each-other's CGPA, and thus avoid long awkward silences.
Thus, the question wasn't "What's your CGPA?" as you had probably expected.)


"No", I said shivering.
"*cold stare*"
"Sorry", I managed to add numbly having been overcome by profound guilt for committing the sin of having wasted my life by not being a pro in guitar by now.
"*cold stare continues*"
"What?", I said to break the ice.

And the next five minutes were spent by them in brainwashing me to move to the 'physically challenged' seat of the compartment, with a guitar being strummed in the background at every punctuation for a dramatic effect.

And I eventually moved.

Then, I saw a guy playing with a DSLR (don't know the full-form, but it's that camera which people hold in their profile pics to flaunt the rising photographer within. Yeah, those photos irritate me too.).

He twisted and turned whatever part of that poor camera he could twist and turn and after having thoroughly enjoyed the sadism, finally focused at something. I gazed at that thing open-mouthed, quite appropriately, as people tend to open their mouths over it. Yeah, you guessed it right, it was a wash-basin.

I let out a sigh and asked what insanity had driven him into doing such a ludicrous act, in these words,
"Uh..Photographer, what are you clicking at ?"
"Dude, I ain't a photographer, I am just an engineer with photography as a passion."
"Cool. But why the wash-basin?"
"It shows the pathos in a train-journey."
"Oh!", and almost felt thankful to him, for not clicking me (when I stood banging at the occupied washroom door in utmost urgency in the morning) in the name of pathos.
"Do you want to see an amazing thing?"

And before I could say anything, there was a big album titled "XYZ's Photography" in my hand.
It consisted majorly of two kinds of photos- without color and without sense.
And in some the watermark was bigger and louder than the subject of the photo itself, as if a narcissistic Shah Jahan had spray-painted his signature in black, right across Taj-Mahal. (Evidently, I suck at analogies)

"You know, only few people can see the creativity and the symbolism hidden in these pics. I don't show my photos to everyone, but then you seemed intelligent enough."
I serenely blushed for 1 full minute and then, realizing that he was eagerly waiting for compliments, added, "Yeah, they are very creative and.... What was the other word ? Yeah symbolic."
"So, like them."
"Yeah, I liked these."
"No, I mean below every photo there is a box, which you tick, if you like it, and on doing that you get to see my creative masterpieces everyday sealed in an envelope waiting for you at the door which will again have a box below that you can tick, if you like it, and then...."

I scratched my head reeling under immense deja vu of having seen this arrangement and album somewhere, but, you know, how the memory is tricked in dreams! I felt pity for that camera that had been staring at that spittoon for about an hour and suddenly the shocking statistics provided by the Camera Rights Association, that had been all over the news last week, 'flashed' in my mind.

They claimed that once in every five seconds, some wannabe, somewhere in the world, molested a DSLR.

And as I tried to slip away from that 'patho'-logical and infectious place and quickly turned away, I saw something that I had least expected to see in a place full of Engineering students and I was genuinely astonished by the presence, that had sparked a sudden amazement and wonder in me. It was almost a miracle witnessing the person in this compartment which could have been possible only by some railway "reservation" screw-up.

I had just seen a girl.

To be continued........



    

Tuesday 16 October 2012

Inertia

Ubuntu
The name that makes many a geek-head bang in silent adoration and encourages many a wannabe-geek to flaunt their love for all things 'Open-Source', which basically means free-stuff.

So, when a virus savaged my Hard-Disk (no AIDS joke intended) I decided to break the windows and let the Ubuntu in the world outside, flow through my ailing computer. And thus, my laptop acquired an orange-purple-ish-jaundice and I already started feeling it to be a pain in my... eyes.

"Ubuntu? Wow! Your Laptop is hot!", many friends commented.
I blushed then, but realized much later, that they meant that literally.

My laptop gradually started melting due to the excessive heat generated by the exhaustive applications being run for my activities of reading a sticky-note or staring at the Desktop reminiscing about how sweet my Windows-days used to be. Finally, the breaking point was, when I saw black marks of molten metal on my table.

So, Ubuntu was out, Windows was in. Then I downloaded some overly possessive Anti-Virus softwares for the system and internet security, which now torment me with so many questions that I sometimes feel guilty, for carrying out highly unsafe procedures that make my system vulnerable to virus; one of the procedures being updating a Facebook-status.

But then I wondered whether Ubuntu really sucked that bad ?
And then, after further self-evaluation, I dramatically discovered that the thing I was hating wasn't Ubuntu actually, but the change that it caused.

We, humans like the objects around, always have a kind of Inertia in all the things we do. We heartily resist any signs of change occurring around us and submit ourselves to it only if the changing force is too strong.

Take the Timeline format of the Facebook, for example. It itched our brains to look at that disgusting thing that our page had transformed into from that adorable format it was in before. Yeah, now we are accustomed and all, but didn't we call Zuckerberg names (which is anyways a fun thing to do) for that petty issue?

See? We hate changes.

Now imagine the plight of the early man who suddenly woke up and found his gorgeous tail missing without sufficient briefing from Darwin. How he might have stared at the masterpiece of nature, that a monkey's hind is, and contemplated extinction. Okay, that led to other good things like the invention of tools and fire for the purpose  of suicide and invention of wheel which ,according to some ancient hieroglyphic records, was made because the early man reportedly wanted 'not to live on this planet anymore'.

But the history, biology and the meticulous archaeology behind the research put aside, what's the moral? It was all due to a change, that too a small wagging one.

So, next time, before you start spewing venom on a new idea or innovation, check if it's the novelty you are hating or the change. And before the matter turns too grave, serious and boring, let's abruptly change the topic.






Monday 8 October 2012

Intro-se-duction

Social Networking.

The art of scarcely knowing a supposedly pretty reportedly girl from perhaps California who might be single.
And that's just Facebook.

Yeah! I may mock it and all but I am a member of this Network and one of its many worthless threads, scrolling down worthless pieces of information, life-threatening chain-mails, lies and thoughts and prejudices and dogmas and revolutions and what not !

Everyone's opinion matters, or say, you are absolutely free to publicly make an ass of yourself. For the internet is a court and we all its jesters- entertaining the rest with our half-baked knowledge, needlessly-high esteem and overly pompous show of stupidity. But it isn't all negative. We now can stalk..oops.. talk to, about, against, for anyone and anything freely. We are now being noticed in an international spectrum. (And I'm not dis-cussing that green-dot now.)

So seizing this opportunity, I have got my blog, which, according to dyslexicdictionary.com, is a large, free space offered to blabber, gabble and jabber about all those things you can't say to one's face because these are too boring or too obvious or too insignificant or too rude. Because, come on, you can't hit me sitting in front of your computer and you are too lazy, I mean, social, to log out of Facebook to come and catch me by my throat.

Hence, the blog.