Profundity

A pen found its way to the desk next to mine. No one calls it their home, the desk next to mine, but people often drop in on it, for work more than pleasure. So when i found the pen there, there wasnt one person i could trace it back to. I asked the most probable suspects, none of them owned up to the pen. I've always wanted to stand t my desk, and yell something out to the whole floor. So machchi market like it'd be! I didnt. Instead, i moved the pen to my desk. Where it lay (and still lays, this one has a happy ending. Or maybe, picture abhi baaki hai.) and occasionally was of use to me.

Now, if you've worked in a software company, you'll be wondering how i can recollect a pen. One pen is pretty much same as the other, and while finding an unexpected pen is always a pleasure, it never sticks around long enough for you to get to know it better. There is almost no place at the workplace where it cant get lost. Desk, conf room, coffee machine, drawer, loo... So, why?

This pen was different. Heavy. Metallic gold, with silver engravings. A _personal_ pen.

Pens do not stay secret for long. If you have one, people around you will come to know of it. And so, this pen too started getting borrowed. What was special about it though, was that it also came back. With startling regularity. Even when i gave it to people saying - i dont know whose it is. After 4-5 such excursions, a theory begun to form in my mind.

What if, this pen's looks are responsible for its coming back? It doesnt look like a typical office pen, so a) people remember who they took it from and b) they feel obliged to return it. It helps, i thought, that it looks expensive. (Only much later did i spy the Pierre Cardin written on it). The pen, its been on more than 15 outings now, and each time, its come back.

If i were a person with that bend of mind, i would write about how 3 such "special" pens could serve a whole floor much more efficiently than regular pens for each person and then maybe come up with a deeper economic theory. But i'm not. So i will simply say this. I might as well have found a cure for common cold.

Bang bang bang

If i had a fully loaded gun, all 6 rounds at my disposal, here's what i'd shoot. After, of course, a long winded speech describing the how, the why and dazzle all with the sheer genius-ness of my evil.

1. My leg

For disrespecting the powers of Vitamin D. For being the most high-maintenance part of my life. For the dull pain that makes me want to pull it out and throw it at people with good intentions.

2. Good intentions

Gah. Enough already! No no, i'm not talking about your good intentions, your good intentions are all good. But in general, they are choking me.

3. My head

For accommodating only two types of computational machinery.

Boolean circuits - hard-coded sections of my brain that give an instantaneous answer to a set of inputs, no feedback, no adaptation possible.

Infinite loops - that consume a lot of brain power but generate no answer.

The Universal Turing Machine would be so glad with my head. The halting problem, at least this once, will be no problem. (Ok fine. Just a joke. Laugh. Dont punch holes in my theory)

Not so long winded after all. Guess the movies have taught me something after all. Now, Looks like i've only managed to find 3 things to shoot at. I'm going to use two bullets on each, just to be sure.

And then i shall become fully headless langdi, and haunt the men's bathroom. Or the women's. How would i ever know.

You change my world

So you find yourself on this planet, see, with this life, and no one tells you why or what. There is you and there is this world and there is all this time, and you have to figure out how best to fill it up. Most people find something or someone of interest to them. They read, paint, draw (which, if recent discussions are to be believed, is not the same as painting), listen to music, watch sports, television, hell maybe even like their job. These are people with read-only access to the world.

Then there is that minority with read-write access. People who change the world, and by change i dont necessarily mean they discover laws of physics or be mass murderers. But simply, people who make the world more interesting for everyone else.

For no particular reason, i'd like to thank some of the people with read-write access to my world. Not at a personal level, you understand, more the sort of people you'd play the 20 questions game about.

In no particular order:

• Simon Singh. For opening me up to non-fiction
  
• Richard Dawkins. For making evolution so damn interesting
  
• Joss Whedon - for firefly. And the image of a lone guy losing to evil studio bosses. But living for ever. Maybe because of that defeat.
  
• Aaron Sorkin. For Studio 60, for a few good men, for the characters, for the writing.
  
• Friends. For making them real people.
  
• xkcd - for making me feel 'in" on an insider joke
  
• Bill Waterson. For Calvin. And Hobbes.
  
• Before Sunrise. For inspired execution of a simple idea.
  
• Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, P.G. Wodehouse. For making me laugh.
  
• ARR - For Aditi.
  
• Chuck Lorre - for The Big Bang Theory, but more for his vanity cards.
  
• Tintin
  
• Batman, Superman. For showing that struggles give meaning to victory
  
• Javed Akhtar - for his words. And his kids ;-)
  
• JK Rowling. For the world that lies beyond platform 9 and 3 quarters.
  
• The Irish accent. I dont know who i have to thank for this!
  

Some observations on my list:
- Where are the Indians? And the women??
- And the complete absence of people who have anything to do with CS, now what does that tell you? That CS needs heroes :P
- People who make me laugh are more likely to be up there than people who make me think.
- Fiction writers strangely dont find much representation. Maybe because while collectively they more or less form the basis of my existence, there is no one writer who i can pick.
- It might seem bit strange to see TV series up there. But these are not merely ones i like. I'm glad they exist in the word i exist.
- It is very likely that a few years down the road i'll look at this list and be embarrassed by some of the names i put in there. A few years ago, i might have put in Ayn Rand, Meg Ryan, Robert Ludlum, Cho (but after Enge Brahamanan, no way) but now you wouldnt catch me dead doing that. No Sir. Or Madam.

Anyone interested in taking this up as a tag? I'd love to know!

P.S. I have almost concluded that i am incapable of writing what i set out to write about. No, really. This post started out by being about how much not being able to remember things sucks. It makes the world less interesting that it could be.

I may be telling me to shut up

Pretty sentences get in the way of what i want to say. Sure, they make for great arm candy and impress people sometimes (myself included) but is that what I want a sentence for?

Well, yes.

Maybe until i learn to get pretty things to say what i want, i should say nothing at all.

Retail therapy

I am, as of today evening, an increasingly indifferent owner of a netbook. The whole process of ownership, from inception to execution, took less than 24 hours. Rather like that Solomon Grundy rhyme.

Vinaya's netbook
Conceived on Saturday
Late night. Over a chat conversation. When her official laptop got wet in the rain and drowned. Or should have. The keyboard developed a high sense of whimsy. The wireless wouldnt work.

Discussed on Sunday
Morning. You know how Sunday mornings are. You want it to be different but it rarely is. All the possibilities that could make it different are bought out of the cupboard, discussed and then safely stored for next Sunday. Like radical changes to room arrangements, big purchases of interesting but essentially unessential things, food from outside.

Googled on Sunday
Prefternoon. On the old one with the whimsical keyboard. Which ups the whimsy. Which makes me take the whole plan more seriously.

Checked out on Sunday
Afternoon. In shops across town. None of which have any of the models the Internet recommends. Seriously. Is this an alternate universe we live in, or merely an older version?

Regoogled on Sunday
Prevening. This time for models we do have in our universe. Fortunately, none of them the Internet spits on.

Bought on Sunday
Evening. On the last day in the life of that shop, so we get a discount. The salesman asks me， do you want it initialized. I say no, thanks. He says Are。You。Sure。Which of course raises all sorts of doubts in my head. (i know, i know). What do you mean by initialization, i ask him. He vaguely mutters about stuff their "engineers" do when the laptop is booted for the first time and takes me to one. Who then proceeds to set the time zone and enter the user name. I want to break my head. But wait, there is more "initialization" where he says no to the anti virus. Right. Extremely important, that.

Blogged on Sunday.
Night. So far so good.

Not long ago

in a city not at all far away, there lived a girl. There was this bunch of stuff she was supposed to do. You know how it is with stuff you are supposed to do. If it is in your way, you step around it. If it grows so big that it becomes impossible for you to step around, why, you sit where you are, lean your back against it and enjoy the view.

One day the stuff she was supposed to do was being a very persistent nagger. It wouldnt let her rest, no matter how much she tried to ignore it. Fed up, she decided to go looking for excuses.

She crossed mountains
she swam seas.
She fought dragons
and got stung by bees.

Finally she found one. And what a good looking excuse it was! Strong and sturdy. No loopholes, whichever side it looked at it. She bought the excuse home. The stuff she was supposed to do was waiting for her, having grown stronger from all that neglect.

She walked in
her head held high.
Leaned on the excuse,
and looked the stuff in the eye.

The stuff gave up. For the time being. It knew however, that as long as she was willing to go through all that just to look for an excuse, it was safe. Its only when she really started to look at the stuff that it had to worry.

She and the excuse went on to live. Not too happily. Not at all for ever after.


(P.S. Thats the second time its happened. One sentence inspires a post and at the end, that sentence is nowhere in the post! This one was to be about her finding an excuse and them living happily ever after and making little baby excuses.)

Astronomy (heaven and hell are covered under that, arent they?)

Bhai wakes up six-ish everyday and rushes to the gym. I get to sleep in, most days till after he gets back.

Hmm. I hope the sun has caught up and now rises from the west.

Hmm. If the sun did rise from the west, it'd mean the earth would be rotating the other way? And if that were to happen, would we get to see the dark side of the moon? Or does the earth influence the rotation of the moon too. Damn you Arthur C Clarke for making Space a real thing and our Solar System the place i would most like to go on a holiday to. You know, rent an asteroid, ride a comet. Visit the Jovian moons, Europa especially. What a pretty name.

Hmm. What happens when you damn dead people? Do they get demoted to hell if they've accumulated a certain number of damns? Or are the account books closed once they reach the gates. If they are already in hell, are they fried in oil rich in all the bad fats?

Hmm.

Shit Happens

Yeah. Everyone knows that. Which is why we have been passed on well developed techniques for dealing with it. God moves in mysterious ways, poorva janma karma, every thing happens for the best - whatever be your cup of irrationality. Its supposed to help you accept shit and move on. Not mope around wondering - why me? Why did i miss that step? Why was the exam so hard just this year? Why did that bird have to fly over my head just then?

But, leaving aside shit that is generated by the randomness that is this universe, there is shit that happens to you for a reason. I dont mean The Alchemist type reasons, the universe is trying to send you a message crap, i hated intensely disliked that book. The day i find myself quoting non-sarcastically from it will be the day that i die. Ahem. Coming back. Shit that happens to you because you did something or said something or should have done something. Shit that you can somehow link back to you. Shit that you can and should learn from.

Sometimes i find myself in such a hurry to move on that i fail to differentiate between random shit and causal shit. I rationalize, i look for excuses, i find them, i move on. Once i've convinced myself there is nothing i could have done, its all pretty simple. A shrug and its done.

And now, because i've just realized that this is exactly what the Serenity Prayer says, and says much better, i paste it here.

God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
The courage to change the things that I can;
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Vitamin Girl!

Its Friday evening. I write this flopped over a bed. Its raining outside, the wind strong enough to bring trees to their knees. The view from the window is nothing special, leaves from some random plant growing in the no-mans-land between our house and our neighbour's, whitewashed walls of a building in the background. But balance that against the fact that i'm home early enough to be able to look out of the window and see, the fact that the rains have spoken against a nasty summer, and the wind, oh the wind... kill me. Kill me now.

No? Okay. You've had your chance. I will now proceed to unleash upon your creation what, if you take out all the crap, will amount to me complaining about the state of my insides. Without having lived to an age that makes such behaviour tolerable.

No, sorry. Its too late now. I hope you've learnt not to waste your chances.


So this pain. If you'd ask me to tell you where exactly it pains, like any half intelligent person i've cornered to talk about my pain would, the best i could tell you until a few days ago was - lower left. It started somewhere in the lower left region and on days, went on all the way to the sole of my foot. Why it got tired of living such a scattered existence and developed a stronger sense of self, we may never know. What we do know however, is that a few days ago, after more than a month of vaguely wandering about, it focused its entire existence on a very specific part of the lower left. Thus giving me the confidence needed to go see a doctor.

Picking a doctor, ah, that was no easy task, given the fact that i've left my mark on every major ortho hospital in the city. Dad suggested i use the most recently used algorithm, which coincidentally threw up a doctor who minimized effort on my part while maintaining confidence-inspirability on his. Off i went.

He asked me to to lie down and wiggle my toes and touch them with my hands and stand on one foot and on another and bent my arms and legs but didnt get anywhere close to specific part, c/o lower left. All the time keeping up with a stream of medical jargon that, in spite of all the medical TV series i consume, i initially thought was directed at me. He finally explained the whole thing to me but by that time i'd zoned out. I heard "fitness condition blah bleh nerves blah vitamin deficiency blah blah blah blood test". Okay, sure. All i expect from a visit to the doctor is a cure. I'm fine not knowing anything else.

I came down to blood testing and i kid you not, they charged me 3K for it! Bloody Vitamin deficiency! Plus, one of the vitamins i was suspected to be deficient in was Vitamin D. I might as well have gone and stood out in the sun. The tests came back and what do you know, it was Vitamin D. Ridiculously low. If i hadnt been such a good kid at school and lets fact it, my mom handnt been teacher in the same school then the teachers would have asked me to stand out in the sun and none of this would have happened. No long term planning, i tell you.

At the end of the exercise, i now have:

1. a month's supply of Vitamin D tablets. Small, peach in colour and sweet. Much confidence that is supposed to inspire, leave alone build up bone strength!

2. weekly dose of vitamin D in sachet, to be drunk with milk. Milk? Who drinks milk anymore?

3. A prescription to include sunlight in my diet, between 11a.m. and 1 p.m. only. I've been imagining myself as multi-Vitamin girl ever since i heard vitamin deficiency, my super power coming from vitamin supplements. But this is even better! Now, between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., all i have to go is go out in the sun and i become Vitamin Girl! Saving the universe from destruction, from 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. only. The rest of the time the universe has to look after itself.

4. A blog post


Its day 1. I already feel better.

P.S. Do sunscreens come in the way of absorption of Vitamin D i wonder. Or are their screens intelligent enough to only block out the UV?

Is cross

With herself. With how almost every aspect of life seems to have led to some bridge to be crossed. And with how she seems to have settled down on this end of the bridge. Built a house there, furnished it, has regular guests over. Even the postal department knows she lives at this end of the bridge. How she occasionally looks to that end of the bridge, imagines what life would be like if she crossed over, and goes back with a wistful sigh to what she has allowed life to become. How reality kicking in once is a while only causes discomfort with the status quo but no progress whatsoever. How the fact that she doesnt have to cross it all alone brings warmth but not courage.

Its not like she hasn't crossed bridges before. But crossing bridges you find yourself put upon is very different from finding yourself a bridge to cross.

P.S. At much stronger version of this post was in my head all evening. Where it went i dont know. Also, the following narrative from my one and only rafting trip was supposed to be woven seamlessly into the post. Why it is here looking like an unrelated sock that comes along when you pull out your woolen sweater from the cupboard i dont know.

It was a 3 day rafting trip. I dont usually get scared of climbing or falling or water or outdoorsy things in general, but this trip had a couple of genuinely scary moments.
One was when we were to cross a grade 3 rapid called the wall. A high rocky mountain on one side, with the narrow river crashing against the rocks. 90 percent change you raft would flip and in you would go into the Ganges, we were told. And it did. And in we went. Though there were life jackets, i spent a few scary minutes going up and back deep down into the water wondering if any of the rescue kayaks would reach me.
Another was at a rapid called Three Blind Mice. Mice 1 and 3 were harmless, but if you got pulled into the mice 2, you'd had it. There were rocks and we could see whirlpools all over the place. Our instructor had told us to simply follow his instructions. Paddle forward he yelled as we came out of mice 1. For some reason the people ahead of me thought he'd asked us to stop paddling and immediately stopped. What were they doing! OMG! I was sure we were crashing into mice 2. Fortunately he saw and yelled louder and they went back to paddling furiously and we escaped to mice 3. Which wasnt all that mild as we'd been led to believe. The raft went almost vertical a couple of times and i was sure the guys sitting ahead of me were going to fall on me.
We were almost at the end of our trip. There was a rock jutting out into the river at a very convenient height and location, and we were to jump off it. I dont get scared of such things, right? I saw people climbing up the rock, looking down, getting scared and the organizers having to push them off. And sniggered. When it was my turn, i went up, looked down and was ready to climb down with my tail between my legs, my reputation be damned, my forever dream of diving into water be damned, the fact that my friend had already jumped before me be damned. The organizer of course refused to let me go back and pushed me off. (I wish i could say it felt awesome, but it ended too quickly for me to actually register much).

That push, i think, is what i'm waiting for.

Paisa paisa

Remember Vinaya's head? Here's more where that came from. Triggered by a company i used to work for going public and leaving me better off than yesterday. To all those demanding a treat, this is it :P



What!

Yeah

Seriously?

Yeah

Just because we worked there 6 years ago?

Yeah

Damn, has it been that long?

[silence]

Okay, okay. Still no age talk.

Yeah

Its a very decent amount of money for having done nothing spectacular at all.

Yeah

Funny no, how money to us is more "just a number" than age is?

Not really

You think there will be a day when it'll mean as much as a good book or say, the beach?

No

Strictly means to an end, eh?

Yeah

If only we knew what the end was!

Dont we all

Cycle Agarbatti

Have you seen the cycle agarbatti ad? (The one i've linked to is in Hindi, but what i'm going to say was inspired by the Tamil version). Mom takes son to temple. Son asks - Mama, agar bhagwan nahi hote toh? With the toh repeated thrice for effect. The bells stop tolling, the sadhu stops counting his beads, birds fly off in temple, as if horrified at the very idea of such a question. And then, the world answers back. In the electricity board board workers perched fearlessly on umm... 10 feet tall poles, wearing what look like mining helmets. In the two college going girls who probably spend as much time studying as praying. In the little girl who idea of God seems to be some kind of Santa Claus who comes at night while you are sleeping and puts water inside your coconuts. In the taxi driver, the tight rope walker, the army...

So far so good. I had to work hard to make what little fun i made of the ad. This is the point where we switch to the Tamil version. Where a supposedly confident and reassuring voice informs us - Haan, bhagwan hain. Only, its not. Its scared and stubborn and sounds very much like its coming from someone who is trying hard to shut himself off to all evidence to the contrary.

But the best part is when the voice says - Cycle Agarbatti. That is when the penny drops. The voice is not worried about farmer crops or waterless coconuts or the well-being of little kids. What makes the voice squeak out Cycle Agarbatti in panic are the economic implications of the question. Agar bhagwan nahi hote toh cycle kaun jalata?

Note: All of this is very likely to be fanciful imagination on my part. In my defense though, the Hindi voice sounded perfectly confidant and reassuring. I dont think my fanciful imagination recognizes linguistic boundaries.

Morning walk

Warning: Long and pointless


"Your lower back should be straight."

She looked up from her push ups to see him standing next to her. She'd seen him by the stairs earlier, yet another person out for a morning walk in the university. "This way you'll have back pain. Keep you lower back straight and bend the upper back. Like this", he demonstrated. She looked on, wondering if upper backs could be bent voluntarily like that. She nodded. She'd understood, at least in theory. "Your turn now,", he said, standing up, "ten push-ups, the right way. And no stopping", he warned. She started. 5, 6, 7... He looked the other way for a second, she declared she was done. He gave a little snort, but said good and left. She yelled out her thanks to his back. She loitered for a while more, thinking of other exercises she could do outside of the gym.

It was when she was walking back that the unusualness of the situation hit her. We dont do that in our country, she realized. We are not friendly at first sight, we dont approach strangers, even in public places. We are probably world leaders in minding our own business. Except if you are old, she thought and chuckled. She hadnt seen her two favourite old morning-walk people in a while. The uncle who came with his walker, a helper, and the sunniest smile you could imagine. The first time he'd wished her good morning across the road, she'd stiffened, sure that she didnt know him, unsure of how to respond. The next time, she wished him back. And that is all it took for it to become a routine. And Pink Floyd Paati*. An old woman who wore a Pink Floyd t-shirt to her walk. She didnt know if it was the short hair or the twinkling eyes or the comfort she radiated, but it took all of two seconds for the t-shirt to stop being incongruous. Those are the kind of people you expect a smile from, she thought, not people from my own generation.

It was much later when she bumped into him again and he said she looked familiar and suddenly he seemed familiar too and they exchanged societies and house numbers that she found out that he lived just two houses away from her and had been doing so for the past 23 years. She'd heard of the cliche of course, but never imagined she'd be one of the people it'd be about. That should be a cliche too, she thought, how everyone thinks a cliche is something that happens to other people. P aunty's son he was. She couldnt believe. P aunty and her dog Caesar and the terror they inspired featured pretty prominently in her childhood memories. The cricket balls that found their way into P Aunty's garden and then went on to become Caesar's snack. The road they practically lived on as kids emptied in seconds if anyone so much as imagined Caesar being brought out for a walk. She'd heard of P Aunty's kids, of course. But this one was already a Bhaiyya** by then, and bhaiyyas unlike uncles and auntys had as little interest in you as you had in them. They wouldnt yell at you to keep the noise down, or shoo you away from the construction site because it was too dangerous. The lived and let lived.

Not such a small world after all, she thought, as she waved goodbye and got on her two wheeler at the University gate.



* grandma in Tamil
** as in Didi-Bhaiyya, used to address any older boy

Its the little things

Today at work this little one and i did something that if i'd seen someone else do, i'd have walked around all day with respect in my eyes. Its funny now, because today i'm both the respected and the respecting. As the little respecting girl i'm all awe and how did they fix that and i'd have never thought of it. As the respected, i know it was nothing more than perseverance and luck and open eyes. I also know:

- The more bored you are with your work, the more other people's problems will call out to you.

- Two heads are better than one. They think differently, but most importantly they make it fun. By which i dont mean to tell you to go Zaphod, although that might be kind of fun too.

- Victory needs an audience. Of a specific kind. Without which it seems incomplete. Insignificant. And this place has set the bar for the right kind of audience impossibly high.

Wait a minute. Does this make me a geek?

It all started with this a virus walks into a bar video. Monu started to send a staggering variety of mathematical concepts into a bar, as befits an academic. We then came up with a half decent one about a Turing Machine in a bar. Which i then proudly passed around. And it all ended when someone sent ME into a bar and i got kicked out because i was too little. Dont ask.

Anyway. Coming to the point, ever since the Turning Machine revelation, i've had this itch to send the folks sitting at various levels of the Chomsky Hierarchy into a bar.


Note: Though there is one representative from every level, i've sent either the machine or the language or both into the bar depending on whichever was easy. Anyone wants to fill in the blanks, feel free.

A Finite State Automaton walks into a bar. "Do we server Finite State Automatons", the new kid behind the counter asks his senior. "Of course", says the senior, "he's regular".

A Regular Expression walks into a bar. "What can i get for you sir", asks the new kid. The Regular Expression yanks something off the army uniform of the guy next to him and throws it across the bar. It goes and lands next to the drink of a guy sitting there. "He'll have what that guy is having", the senior translates, "and keep them coming".

A Pushdown Automaton walks into a bar. "We dont server PDAs", says the bartender. "Why not", whispers the new kid, "i hear they can go on forever". "Yes, but they are terrible at holding their drink", the senior says. "The see something new, and out pops the old".

A Context Sensitive Grammar walks into a bar. "Do we server him", asks the new kid. "Only if he came in with Tony and Williams", says the senior, "we dont want to be dropping him home now, do we".

And now for the one that started it all.
A Turing Machine walks into a bar. "We dont server Turing Machines", says the bartender. The Turing Machine shakes his head sadly and moves to another state.

Modesty compelled me to shut up, but modesty was bested by honesty. Someday, i'm telling you, these bar stories will be used to teach Theory of Computation to a generation of computer science students. A subject surprisingly easy to botch up. I should know, i've been through it twice - the wrong way and then the right way. The machines, the rules, they are all so pretty by themselves, its almost as if they are made for missing the woods for the trees.

I didnt do it

Have you ever been so overwhelmed by sleep or boredom that you had to find a place to put your head down and switch off for a bit? Have you even picked the loo to be that place? And woken up many many minutes later because of a cramp in the neck? Gone to splash water on your face and spotted something on your forehead that on closer inspection turned out to be the pattern on your sweater? Which has embedded itself there when you lay your head down on your hand and slept. A diamond shaped pattern with a deep vertical gash at the center. Have you then tried rubbing it off with water only to see it turn an angry red? Have you given up and gone and sat at your desk pretending to be in deep thought, one hand covering your forehead?

No? Me neither.

While we are talking about things you and i havent done, have you, as part of pretending to be in deep thought, wondered what would happen if you stuck the legs of the Dogbert toy on your desk into one of the POE ports on your desk? Would Dogbert be wired in and empowered? Would it bring that evil dog to life? And would that be such a bad thing? Having something in your life that can unhesitatingly be called evil, i mean. So you could hate it, put up pictures of it on a dartboard, plot to destroy it, dream about its downfall, all without a nagging sense of guilt. As opposed to being slowly but surely strangled by good intentions and not being able to respond, except with good intentions of your own.

If i had the source code

Do you have things that fall into "things you cannot change" category of the Serenity Prayer, you are wise enough to know it and yet you helplessly rage against it? There are many, now that i think of it, but the one i want to rage about now is the necessity of having to be dropped home if it gets late.

I hate it. Having people escort me halfway across town just because i decided to stay out late, no matter that they do it willingly, no matter that i'd have done the same if the positions were reversed, no matter that they tell me my company is worth the trouble (and i am vain enough to believe them). In fact i'll go all dramatic on you and tell you that late nights are when the chains of womanhood are most keenly felt.

What would the world be like, if i had the source code? It'd be an extended IITK campus, where time is just a number. Where the best memories are made at times considered unsuitable in the outside world. Where the only danger you face at night is an overly curious night watchman wanting to know which hostel you belong to.

Only, there'd be a little more wind.

Moonlighting

Prologue

Granny fainted. Fell down very gracefully, according to reports, so no bones were broken. However, she couldnt sit up on her own after that, leave alone move about. Several ambulance rides later, she finally settled down to life on a single cot in her room. As much as grannys are capable of settling down. She was more active lying on that cot than most people with 4 limbs in working condition. Her bouts of activity resulted in more falling down. And so the family high council decided to send me to keep night-watch and cry wolf if needed. Of course i slept on the job, choosing my sleeping position strategically so that if she ever fell down, an alarm would involuntarily escape my throat. Only problem was, people in their second childhood went to sleep at 9...

Chapter 1

To the idiot whose wi-fi signal spills over to my granny's bedroom,

Who the *&@#^% taught you to use WPA for your connection?? Such knowledge is most unexpected and disturbing at several levels. Do you have any idea what it does to my post dinner socializing? All i can do between 9 and 11 now is watch movies on my laptop.

Epilogue

Today i forgot to get headphones from home.

P.S.

(Yeah, my story has a P.S. You have a problem? )

Do not lecture me on the risks of using open wi-fi networks. If there is a hacker in this area, losing the few movies i carry around in my laptop'd be totally worth fishing him/her out!

Presenting...

At an age at which, if i'd been even remotely following the great Indian timetable, i should have presented two kids, one car and one husband, i, maybe not proudly but definitely unashamedly present - my new two wheeler!

Its finally home! Not without hiccups, where would be the fun in that. How does it change my life? Let me count the ways.

1. No more kicking the bike every morning. Apart from the physical damage to my back etc, it just felt wrong. I felt like one of those heartless people who overload an old donkey and beat it with a stick to make it go.

2. No more being forced to wear sports shoes to work because kicking in ahem, delicate sandals is not good. Not for the sandals, not for the foot.

3. No more getting into ridiculous situations.
I'm on my way to a friends birthday breakfast. I park near the restaurant (ironically named Good Luck) and reach for the key to shut off the vehicle, only to discover - no key! The damn thing has fallen off a running vehicle. After giggling for a while at the ridiculousness of not being able to shut off you vehicle, i decide to do something about it. I vaguely remember hearing a clang somewhere on the way and retrace my route. The one-ways along the way do their bit to help. No keys. No pink skateboard key chain bhai bought from Germany either. At this point, my brain has decided that even if for some reason the vehicle does stop, i will not be able to start it again without a key. You could be stranded in the middle of the road, it says. I dont reason why. I focus on keeping the engine running like my life depends on it. Take the vehicle to this faraway key maker i know because of one of my previous stupidities. He fixes me a new key in less than two minutes and tells me to keep it in my pocket at all times. Even while riding. Ride back to Good Luck, where folks are still patiently waiting and more importantly, so is the cake
That morning, a hole in the ozone layer is named after me.

4. No more polluting the city. Once the ozone layer forgives the above incident, maybe it and i can work on being friends again.

5. Out of a sense of shame that i didnt know i have, i'll be wearing a helmet from now on. Only problem is the helmet i have (and have had for ages) ENTIRELY COINCIDENTALLY just happens to be the same colour as my bike. Having laughed at colour coordinated people all my life, i'm not sure i have it me to do this.


P.S. In case your keys ever fall off, remember:
Bikes CAN be started without keys.The kick will work. So will the button start.
Pressing the choke shuts off the vehicle. If you ask me for the science behind that, i will ignore you.

HBD

For reasons that hopefully have nothing to do with age, i sent out the following text as mail to everyone in my office. It also talked about sweets, so people forgave the mail (i think). You never know, though.

Time: 3rd Feb, around 11 p.m.
Place: Inside Vinaya's head


Really?

Yeah.

Just because the earth went around the sun once more since you popped
out?

Yeah.

Arent we getting a little old for this?

[silence]

Ahh. Right. Sorry. No age talk on the birthday.

Yeah.

Did we in any way help the earth on its journey?

No.

Did we maybe deflect a passing meteor, clear some asteroids out of the
way?

No.

So we just hopped on for a free ride.

Yeah.

And yet we celebrate.

Yeah.

Oh my god! If it were up to you, you'd still wear a new frock and
distribute lollipops, wouldnt you?

Of course not!

I give up. Happy Birthday. Have a great day.

Oh i will.

One Friday Night...

Its Friday Night. Inertia of a magnitude that would do massive bodies in the sky proud has sent in. I hop from desk to desk, looking for excuses to hang around. I find many. A bunch of us finally settle down to chairs, laughing at jokes from last Friday and making more for the next. I hear a song playing. "I hear a song playing", i say. "So do I", says the one sitting next to me. We look around to see no obvious source of music. Paranormal activity is suspected and joked upon. Something makes me look for my phone. I fish it out of my bag to find a call in progress. What follows is a series of such bizarre co-incidences that if you were a betting man, you'd give up both betting and your manhood.

- my phone is not locked
- all the shifting i was doing in the chair causes random buttons to be pressed
- first the recently called list is opened up
- scroll down 10 or 11 names on it
- stop at the name of the guy sitting next to me (the one who also heard the music)
- call him up
- in the short gap you get to press * if you want to copy the hello tune, * is pressed

which results in both of us hearing his ring tone. When i fish out the phone, the call is still in progress. I cancel it and promptly get an SMS saying i have been charged 15 rupees for the hello tune.

Like he said, it made a believer out of us. FSM teri mahima apaar! Only, the next time you decide to show off your awesome powers, O one with the noodly appendages, could you pick someone with more taste in hello tunes? :P


P.S. Sorry Mohsin, i knew you said you'd blog about this, but i figured i got to post since i'd paid.
I actually wrote the whole thing just so i could make that joke. But i'm sure you'll agree, all is fair in love, war and the making of jokes.

Some people i tell you. Impossible to please!

It struck me (again) when i was watching the Aman ki aasha ad on some TV channel, how easy it is to manipulate our feelings. Get the right words, good music, and you can make people feel anything! Granted, getting these two right is not easy, but its possible is my point.

Take the Delhi 6 ending for example. Remember the cringe worthy heaven scene at the end? What should have happened is that it should have left a bitter taste that should have spoilt the ending, if not the entire experience. But no, all they had to do is play Arziyan (Maula Maula) after that scene and i walked out of the hall inexplicably happy and content.

Or take the Aman ki aasha thing. With lyrics like

Nazar mein rehtey ho jab tum nazar nahin aatey
Yeh sur bulaatey hain jab tum idhar nahin aatey

you dont stand a chance! I felt like calling out to the people across the border! Dont get me wrong, i have nothing against them, but i know them not from Adam. I've heard the whole"we are the same people" argument, but that has never made me feel nostalgic, yes nostalgic about the good old times, which is what the song manages to do.

It irritates me. I dont like feeling like a puppet - play the right strings, get the right emotions. Oh but i do love the words! What i will have to do is to take the words, look at them from far far away, nod my head and say - hmm, they do fit beautifully into the context, all the time being very careful not to let them touch me. So much fun.

I wonder

(This is what a gtalk status message grew into.
Gtalk status - my twitter cum FB cum "shouting from rooftops")

What is it with songs that make you want to dance?
Even though you cant
Not with a gun to your head
Not even when no one's watching

What is it with books that make you want to lose yourself in them?
Become a ghost
Live between the words
Trapped and yet free

What is it about characters that brings them to life?
Touch, see, feel what they feel
The imaginary becomes real
As the world fades to black

How is it some people never really go away?
A hi five is all it takes
Time, space
and distance turn fake

After a trip to Landmark...

Existential crisis, existential angst, the unbearable unfairness of being or even plain old boredom, there is very little a good book cannot block.

And sometimes, that is all the cure there is.

How i met my card

Long long ago, in a land not far away, there lived people who had accepted being chased by credit card companies as part of their lives. While I am old enough to have lived and earned in those times, i escaped the persecution mainly by having my nose up in the air and not having a mobile phone. I used to go around feeling pretty smug about not having succumbed to a credit card. Then of course, Indian railways had to open up online train bookings, life had to make me travel by air, even the damn bus companies had to go online! And so, i had to get my nose down a little and go sniffing for credit card companies.

The first time i said yes to one of those random callers who are most anxious to offer you a card without even knowing your name, she fell off her chair. But then, she got off the floor, pulled it together and offered to send an "executive" to collect the documents. He came, he made me sign in a million places, he went. And THEN they realized that since they hadn't ever heard of the company I work for, it might not be such a bright idea to offer me use of their money. Yes. I was rejected. (I think i may be building something of a reputation in being rejected by the unrejecting. My two-wheeler was rejected for the Pollution Under Control certificate. Twice.) Which i found funny. So the next time one of them called, i said - I have already been rejected by a bank as not being safe enough. Are you sure you want to offer me your card? Which led to uncomfortable silence of the most delightful kind. The fun wore off though when i had to go around begging for credit cards.

So this time, i took their call seriously. Shamelessly told them i wanted one. Fully cooperated. Gave them all the necessary documents after only 3 postponements. Cheerfully tolerated their extensive verification process which basically involved contacting me via 300 different ways and asking me the same questions. Probably in the hope that one out of those 300 times i might slip up and give them the wrong date of birth or marital status. While it isnt over yet, they do seem to have exhausted ways of getting to me. Do you see the horizon there? One of these days when the sun comes up on that horizon, it'll bring my card along.

And that makes me ask. What will it mean to me? How will it change my life? I've always maintained that i'd make a terrible customer to them companies. I dont buy impulsively, the only things i do buy and are books and occasionally clothes, shiny things on the Internet dont tempt me. But there might be a hole in my defenses i'm beginning to glimpse on the same horizon. The next time Jimmy Wales personally asks me for money for Wikipedia, how can i refuse? Or Dave Freer for that matter. He is an SFF writer based in Africa who has decided to emigrate with family and pets to Australia. While moving the humans is no problem, it seems the pets will need to be quarantined and the cost for that comes to a ridiculous 25000 dollars! They dont have the money and so he has decided to put up chapters of his book "Save The Dragons" as and when people pay for them. I finished reading all the paid-for chapters that have been put up, and i think that is where i'm going to Shree Ganesh my card. Not because i'm that fond of pets, but because i'm ridiculously fond of SFF. And Save The Dragons is awesome. At least the 22 chapters i read are.

P.S. Got the Dave Freer story from Whatever, which apart form general entertainment, is an awesome place to discover new SFF. Especially the Big Idea posts, where he gets new authors to come and talk about the idea behind their books. They make me itch, most of them, they are that interestingly written. If there was a big flashing button there that said "Buy and this shalt be delivered at your doorstep", i cant think of too many things that would stop me from clicking on it.

Attack of the withdrawal symptoms

Like Sunday evenings arent bad enough by themselves, i am having to battle severe withdrawal symptoms. These stem from three causes and in decreasing order of potency are:

1. The end of Sports Night
Another Sorkin series discovered on youtube. The man can write and how! Someday i'm going to meet him and hit him on the head head for ruining conversations for me. Nothing will ever match up. The series, its not perfect, its preachy in parts, people are too nice, but they are in my head and. Will. Not. Get. Out. I dont know how authors do it, i just dont. Live, sleep, breathe their characters for years and then move on. I finished the show in a week and yet i sit here feeling like someone has died. Like lots of people have died.

2. The end of Hyperion series
He makes you work hard for the first hundred pages or so, but man, is it worth it! Its about a group of "pilgrims" on their visit to the Shrike, a killing monster or avenging angel depending on which religion you come from. Each pilgrim shares his/her story of why they are going to see the Shrike. One (well, okay, two) book with so many stories, each so powerfully written. The book has more than its share of unexplained scientific jargon and a million things you are expected to accept and move on, but the end ties up the loose ends better than i've come to expect from a science fiction novel.

3. The end of my almost two week long vacation
That i had to take otherwise my leaves would have expired. And i took because i havent learnt to ask - so what. I've rediscovered that i handle change quite okay. I dont miss office on my first day of holidays. From day one, its like i've always lived the holiday life. And tomorrow when i show up at work, it'll be like i never left at all. Its only the transitions that bum me out. A lesson that should give me courage to face bigger changes in life that i'm running away from because of the fear of transition. But doesnt.

Its nine o clock on a Sunday, too early to sleep, too late to start something new. I feel empty inside.

And now for some unseasonal corniness

''Can you really have friends in office", my cousin asked me as he was leaving. He will be out of college in 6 months. While i was thinking, awww, another kid all growed up, he added, "I mean, they can only be colleagues right?"

I had a sitcom style flashback in which i went over all the "moments" with people from both my first jobs. Well okay, it was only a couple of moments then, but now that i have all the time in the world to write and you, apparently, have nothing better to do, i shall elaborate.

Or not. There is corny and then there is corny. Enough to say that work people, and this is going to be a really long sentence, in spite of my best attempts at ignoring them with silence, jokes and frosty nosed stares, barge or politely knock their way into my life and demand to know what the hell am i doing with it, thus providing much needed moments of introspection and shame, which i hope will someday add up to me getting off my backside and doing something. They bring good ideas beyond work to life, i cannot tell you how satisfying and empowering that is. They read my books and on behalf of my books i am very grateful. What a waste it would be if all of a book's life was about being read by me. Just me. Imagine the size of that existential crisis! If i cannot give them quality, i can at least do quantity!

Its been over 5 years since i worked in the same workplace with the folks at my first first job and so i can safely say its not a same-place-same-time kind of relation. So i told him, "YES, you can have friends in office. I dont know about your second/third job, i suppose it will get difficult as you move higher, but at your first job, you will find friends."

Obligatory whiney year end post

Heroes season 1 comic
Superman For Tomorrow - Vol 1 and 2
My Laptop
A hard disk full of entertainment
The Fall of Hyperion

It takes all that to make me feel safe enough to go spend a day with my granny. Didnt need to go beyond the first two, but thats not the point. Common sense says there has to be a life beyond books and movies. After all, so many people around survive, if not flourish, without either. Whoever is hiding that world from me (of course i have to find someone to blame!) is doing a damn good job of it too. Showing me all the unattractive or impractical alternatives - malls, pubs, friends, work, family, travel - any of which can fill, but none of which fulfill.

Day 3 of my "take it or leave it" vacation. Existential crisis looms large. Some big gesture is in order to see me through the other side of this one.

Breaking news

I might have been on TV!

Okay, okay, i'll rewind.

After staring in a film (which finally released a few weeks ago, but not me nor any of the 5 folks who were with me in it managed to get it together to go see it. Are we in it? I guess we'd rather not know), it looks i'm now broadening my horizons with television. The economic Times news channel did a short piece on my office that was telecast at 1 today, but we dont get that channel at home. Is that my curse? Not being able to see my "work"? And how did i get to probably star in it? You get to decide!

A. I am an indispensable part of my office. I am its spirit. I am it.
B. When i work, i embody the image of a software engineer with the source code to change the world.
C. They were shooting at lunchtime and i was back early from lunch.

So, for reasons A,B or C, the camera was pointed at me.

Oh damn, he's on to me. Act natural, remember, act natural and smile. Wait, smile while looking at the screen? Thats not natural. Okay, no smile. What am i looking at? Did i write this code? Look silly to me. Dont just stare blankly, use your fingers! Let them fly over the keyboard, let the screen fill up with the fruits of your labour. Aaha, compile the code! Brilliant. Yes, now raise your eyebrow at that non-existent compile error. Very good. Now go tail -f some logs. Frown at the messages filling up your screen. I dont care if they are saying all is well. Frown at them as some minor character in a movie would frown at some innocent looking aberration that will ultimately herald the end of the world. Dont smile, dammit. Dont twitch either. Aah, finally he is off my face! And on to my fingers now? Really?? Our office ought to have better to offer than my fingers. See all these wires on my desk? And under my desk. Why dont you take a shot of me in the middle of all this mess? Oh your viewers will not get the irony of a company into wireless being filled with wires? Okay my fingers have run out of polite things to do. Can we move on now? Thank you!

There is a repeat telecast sometime tomorrow, but i'm not likely to catch that either. So i guess we'll never know. Moving on to the bigger picture though, the universe seems to have compressed my burst upon the film scene - rise to be the reigning queen - grow old but refuse to go out - move on to television career graph to the span of a year. Looks like the next step of moving on to reality shows will come pretty soon! Inspired by this tweet, i think i'll sign up for KKK! The supreme commander of the armed forces versus the unknown underdog. Aah, what a story that will be! With a nail-biter finish where the underdog wins because of her natural tree-climbing skills. And then refuses to come down and lives happily on it ever after.

Rambling. About work for once

That bug, it is a silly mistake but it cuts deeper than it should. I spend hours wondering how I could be dumb enough to have missed something so obvious. For that day, i'd like nothing more than to go into the past and not make it. Or baring that, go back into the past and hit the me there on the head.

Or the day I roam around in wide eyed amazement, having watched the master at his very best. No traces of the wistful sigh that comes from knowing you are not made for those heights but wanting to get there anyway.

Or the day spent chasing a tricky little issue, preferably someone elses. The thrill of the chase, the fun in pitting our collective brains against the code, the frustration at being almost but not quite there and the pleasure in finally nailing it.

Such days make me wonder - do i after all love what i do? Not the kind of love that announces itself with a bang. But the kind that creeps up on you and envelopes you without your realizing it.

Somehow, I dont think so. For one, such days are too infrequent. And there is very little that is free flowing, its more hard work/discipline and less inspiration/creativity. For another, the idea of spending the rest of my life in this profession still scares the hell out of me. To be fair though, the idea of anything for the rest of my life is scary. (Its a little bit like looking through Adams Total Perspective Vortex. Only, instead of you being dwarfed by the rest of the Universe, you are dwarfed by the rest of your life and the idea of managing it.). One day at a time, i can live with. But then, that is not saying very much. As life has shown with exceptional clarity, there is very little i cant live with, one day at a time.

Talking about the weather

Since i havent classified anything in a while. I've often tried to slot the people in my life into two groups which i shall name fair weather friends and, rather imaginatively, foul weather friends. Not in any way related to the usual sense if any, in which these terms are used.

Fair weather friends are those with whom you like to "hang" in fair weather. When the going is good, they make it better. You enjoy the same things, you laugh at each other's jokes. They are the ones you miss during the good times.

And then there are foul weather friends. People you want when the going gets tough. Who encourage you, advise you, motivate you or just listen. The world feels a lot less worse when they are by your side.

And then of course are the people who defy classification. The people who carry your weather with them. They can make the sun come out on a rainy day. Or cause thunder showers in summer. The ones who evoke such strong reactions from you, you wish you knew why.

My goodbye present

Thats it. My last "girlfriend" is getting ready to leave the country. To whatever/whoever is responsible for this exodus, i'm telling you, i wont let it be. Do you hear me? My people in England, France and god knows what all places in you yes yay, beware. Someday i'll come to each one of these countries and get you all back to mine.
Where i shall as usual continue to not keep in touch, but thats neither here nor there. I want my people in my country!

A hard night's day

The office van spat him out. He dragged himself up the two floors of his building. Opened the door and sleepwalked straight to the kitchen. Where she had left him breakfast with a Note. That woke him up. Like everyday.

Good morning da!

Heat it before you eat it. Add you clothes to the machine and switch it ON. Or else, we shall be wearing our wedding clothes to work tomorrow. Latest Heroes (yuck) streamed on the PC.

He settled down to Heroes. Reheated breakfast in hand, hum of the washing machine in the background. He felt loved.

I'm feeling postitve

I missed a step and tore a ligament. Yeah the same one again. One basketball coach used to yell out butter fingers whenever someone let slip a pass they shouldnt have. I now have my own contribution to add to the colourful description of human body parts. Crepe paper ligaments. That tear even on a change in wind direction. Or the flapping of a butterfly's wings. It isnt anywhere as torn as the last time though, so i get away with crepe bandage and no running/jumping/skipping.

So i decided not to be a hero, not to go to work with a limp as if my putting a semi colon was going to save the world. I decided to work from home. I got off to an early start too, before the state electricity board decided to step in. They cut off power for the whole damn day and when asked why, said it was Thursday, like that explained everything and how dumb could one be for asking. So i couldnt work from home, i couldnt entertain myself from home, i certainly couldnt not be at home. The day could have been awful but i had the Big Bang by Simon Singh (who is now my new rock star) for company and of course afternoon sleep. I realized something during the course of the day. Here i am, on an unscheduled leave, and it doesnt bother me, it doesnt affect my work, it doesnt affect anyone else at work or probably anyone else in the world! While it should have made me feel about this big and made question my role in the scheme of things and left me generally depressed, it didnt. People, or at least I, dream of having a life they can take a break from whenever they feel like one and come back to it and for it be like they never left. Or, because i've been reading about spacetime and would like to show off, primarily to the future me, i dream of being light enough to cause minimal distortion in the spacetime around me. So i can walk off to another part of the universe and not have planets plummet into each other or fly off into space. Today, at a very micro level, was about that.

Onto books now

The first time i came across Neil Gaiman was at the science fiction section at Landmark. He was sold to me by a 6 footer who wouldn't touch books with a 7 foot pole. Big name in the comic world, he wrote Sandman, don't you know? Huh? I bought it anyway. Anansi Boys. It came with a lot of praise and a Hugo nomination that the author declined, say. I could barely finish it. It was one of those rare books i had to skip the middle to get to the end of.

My next one was American Gods (which Wikipedia now tells me might have been a prequel to Anansi Boys!). Hugo and Nebula award winner. I couldn't read past one fourth of that one. I went around feeling ashamed of myself. I couldn't finish his books. What was wrong with me??

The third one was The Graveyard Book. Hugo again. Lot of praise again. I justified the purchase saying it was a children's book, there is no way i couldnt finish a children's book. I promised the 6 footer that if i didnt make it through this one, i'd mentally classify Gaiman as an author of umm... literary fiction or... magic realism or... yes, good housekeeping, stuff i wouldnt touch with a 7 foot pole. But this one had me at hello.

Its about a little boy called Nobody (Bod) Owens who is bough up in a graveyard. By ghosts. There is a scene early on when Bod is just a baby, living with real, living parents. He has managed to topple off his crib by climbing on his teddy and has waded his way to the head of the stairs.

Stairs that went up were tricky things, and he had not yet entirely mastered them. Stairs that went down however, he had discovered, were fairly simple. He did them sitting down, bumping from step to step on his well-padded bottom.

I read those lines and then i couldnt make myself get back to the book for the rest of the day, i was so excited! How does anyone come up with stuff like that? You'd have to go inside a little one's head to find it, thats the only place where stairs that go up and stairs that go down exist as two different things! Although, I'm not sure children (or young adults as they seem to be called these days) who are the audience for this book will "get it". It might work on them as a joke though. I went back to the book at night and it didnt disappoint. I got so caught up in Bod's wanderings around the graveyard, i forgot he was the only living kid in a colony full of ghosts. His adventures reminded me how little it takes to keep you entertained as a kid. I loved how it is okay to invent a concept like "Freedom of the graveyard" without defining it exactly, because kids are used to things they dont entirely understand. I loved that Bod had Silas, an adult who is his filter to the world, who helps things make sense, who keeps out the bad stuff, while preparing him for the day he will have to walk out into it. And like a reviewer says on the book, i cant wait to see what happens next. I hope there is more!

This is me trying to be back

Why has this become so difficult? Small things that i could easily pull into respectable (at least in my eyes) posts now just refuse to grow up. Some of them flirt with moving out to twitter but finally just give it up and settle down in their pyjamas on the overstuffed sofa that is my head. Which is the perfect place to just be, really. No one there is going to tell you to stand on your own two feet, go out in the world and make a place for yourself. Me being a firm believer in not telling others to do what i dont myself do.

And with that post, content over having won a small victory over lethargy and indifference and apathy, she will forget that there is a war.

About TV, mostly

(She gets back to blogging after months and all she has to write about is Television. Talk about living vicariously.)

I havent seen any Star Trek other than the latest movie (and that too for apna Spok), but this had me nodding along. Science fiction is supposed to be about how a different plant, different technology, different species makes for different societies with different rules. Having a story and making technology fill in the blanks is just doing it backwards. And i went around being shocked at this obvious-once-pointed-out deception and how people stood for being thus strung along until bhai made me see that is is exactly what all the medical series that i so love to watch do! Tech the tech. House, Grey's Anatomy, all of them. House at least its excusable. There House is the hero and the medicine, however clever it may be, is just the background. Its about how twisted House is and how it affects everything and everyone around him. And they dont wing that, they dont tech House just to neatly tie up an episode. However, now that he is becoming less twisted, i wonder if there is any justification to keep watching. Grey's Anatomy is supposed to be about how medicine and working is a hospital shapes people, makes them who they will turn out to be. And they set out all the drama and totally wing the medicine part.

Does all that analysis and resulting realization mean that i'm going to stop watching? Heh. I'll just be a little more ashamed doing so, but shame i've made my peace with a while ago.

Let me now tell you about an ant and a grasshopper. It takes its time but winds its way back to TV, i promise. So, I am the ant. Not so much the hardworking bit but the hoarding stuff for cold winter days bit. And Bhai, he is the grasshopper. All about instant consumption, living as if the future will never come. And you know what? It never does! Never does he go around starved of TV stuff to watch. Never have i been able to gloat about my hoard of serials to be watched while he is getting bored out of his wits. Have they gone and gotten rid of winter and not told me about it so i keep hoarding like an ass? Does the entertainment sun really shine all the time?

This weekend I

1. Said no to a trip. Again.

2. Trawled the Science Fiction and Fantasy sites on the net for stuff i can/want/should be reading. Now the proud owner of a 3 page list of potentials.

3. Went to the Landmark sale. 3 pages - 4 lines to go.

4. Took photograph of a rat that decided to help itself to food off my mom's plate while she was on the phone. Then took photos of its heroic capture and undignified disposal involving a rubbish pan, the cover of a CD stand and two very brave men.

5. Felt warm due to faraway people. And my 3 page list.

Really? You can see the clothes??

I didnt "get" Kaminey. Not the brilliance. Not the cleverness. Not even when they were pointed out to me. The small things did not add up to something majestic, they just remained small. I'm still not sure why he made the movie.
I shouldnt care but it sort of pisses me off that i seem to be the only one.

The one thing i did get is the song.

Aah. now that i've said that, you can begin to shoot me.

I might have been in love before, but this time its real

Of course its a TV show. Studio 60 on the sunset strip. Has only one season, all of it on youtube. The gigantic idiots at the network that produced show took it off air after the first season because, well, because they are gigantic idiots. (I need to learn stronger words to express my disapproval, i do.) Its so awesome, i cant tell you but let me try anyway. Its got Mathew Perry, and much as i love friends, Matt, the character he plays on this show, is what i will think of him as from now on. Okay, maybe half Matt half Chandler, its that good. But, he is not the best thing about the show (Danny Tripp is). The best part is the writing. Its clever, its funny, it... sparkles. I can see how terrible i am at doing justice to it, just help me out and watch the pilot, will you?

I looked up the guy creating the show, Aaron Sorkin. And what do you know, it looks like i've been a fan of his writing without even knowing it was his. A few good men and The American President, both movies with dialogs i've loved. Looks like i will have to watch The West Wing after all!

Warning: Based on what I've seen and read, it looks like he likes to create incredibly nice characters who think nothing of staking their careers on their principles in the most perverse of situations. If they did it in real life, they wouldn't have much of an ass left after life was done kicking it. If such (seeming and probably) naive behaviour bothers you, try to forget that it does while you watch the show.

To give you a sample of how much i love it, here is a scene from episode 14. Danny and this one person (in the most cliched of romantic comedy tricks) are locked up on the roof. They've been trying to get out but cant until the episode is over. They wonder (being big shots) how come no one has missed them. Towards the end, this guy Cal comes up on the roof to switch something on and finds them here.

Cal: J, Danny you guys are here!
J: Yeah
Cal: We've been looking for you
Danny: Yeah?
Cal: (a tad defensively): Yeah!
Danny: Where?

Totally unfunny on paper right? I've seen that clip 300 times and each time I've laughed at Danny's belligerent Where.

So if you ask me, what did Bhai get you from Germany, I will not show you the pink miniature skateboard with wheels key chain that he mooched off someone who got it for free with something and then i mooched off him, i will not show you the 300 black shirts he got for himself and then tried to push on me insisting that they were my size, i will say he got me Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

Be kind. Do not rewind.

You think you are over it. Its all locked safely in the past,. No, not locked. It used to be locked when the past was too close to the present to be left unguarded. But now, with time and the distance that comes with time, the lock has become redundant. You rarely venture there and even if you do, the layers of dust make the memories sufficiently hazy to not mean much. It surprises you sometimes, you understand what people mean when they say life goes on.

All it takes is one silly photograph on someone's Orkut album for the floodgates to open. You are not even in the damn photo, but you are there.

And the funny part is, i knew this would happen. I'd be walking the hostel corridors, on my way to my room and i'd grin about the fact that someday i will look back at this totally unremarkable moment with more longing than it deserves. Turns out i am as wise as i think i am.

Jokes

To really get this, you have to:

1. Know something about Chennai
2. Have heard of Carnatic music
3. Be familiar with the music scene down south
4. Have read the HitchHikers Guide to the galaxy
5. Be acquainted with Wolfram Alpha
6. Be familiar with Tamil movies
7. Have grown up among/around Tamil people
8. Be a computer science graduate (probably not necessary, but i am not aware of any other career paths that go through the Turing Test)

The pseudo Tamilian than i am, i'm sure there are a lot of references there that i have missed. But i absolutely love it that i "get" a joke that not too many people on this planet will get. It makes me feel special. (More special, actually, than i would feel if i had "made" the joke.) Like there is a secret club i belong to and its a private joke we share. Which is why i love xkcd so much. Though i'm surrounded for the most part of the day by people who "get" it, and probably get it better than i do, it still makes me feel like i belong.

New phone resolutions

Once upon a time there lived a girl. She had a phone, not that she didnt, but it was ancient and pulling on on life support. She'd decided to do the kind thing by pulling the plug, but couldnt actually do so until she had a replacement. So she looked high and she looked low and she asked around and she got utterly confused. She was fuzzy on the requirements, she was fuzzy on the budget, she was fuzzy on why she needed a phone at all! (Dont tell anyone, but her STD bill for the last month was 10 rupees.) Then one day she saw an ad in the newspaper for a phone that looked decent (that was important to her, who woulda thunk), matched some set of requirements and budget, and her brother did not threaten her with - its either me or the phone. So one fine Sunday she went and bought it.

That night, the God of mobile phones, in an attempt to regain territory from the God of equipments bought in a fit of passion that then spend all of their shelf life in a box on a shelf came in her dream and gave her one tablet with 5 commandments.

1. Thou shalt carry thy phone. Everywhere.
So she does. Everywhere. And when she forgets, she crosses floors without a thought to go get it.

2. Thou shalt not miss calls.
She doesnt. She simply cuts them off. And then follows commandment 3.

3. Thou shalt call people up.
She does. Even though she knows people are likely to fall off their chairs in surprise and break their legs if she calls them up just like that. She believes they will agree it was worth it. After all, as she knows from personal experience, breaking a leg is not as bad as it is made out to be. She can see herself running out of people though. (Damn you you yes yay and you kay and germany. Gimme my people back!)

4. Thou shalt charge thy phone
She does. Religiously.

5. Thou shalt know thy phone
She is getting there. Already she can set the alarm and play the radio (which she still thinks is the coolest part of the whole thing) and take pictures and use the dictionary without throwing the phone at the wall in frustration. She next plans to tackle the bluetooth monster.

Its been three days and so far, the God of mobile phones has no cause to complain.

Notes to the future me

Ideally, i'd like to yell this so the whole world can hear. Or at least, my world. Since that isnt happening, i'll yell it on my blog.

<begin imagining caps>
You can either get things done or do them your way. Wanting to get things done your way is just plain greedy. If i believed in a universe that was interested in you and interested in being fair, i'd tell you that it'd give you one under the ear. (I know i ruined kaan ke neeche, but nothing in English comes close.)
<end imagining caps>

Me, right now i'm in that in between place where i neither do things nor get them done. I know its not going to last, so when it over and i have to pick one or the other, can you please shove this post in my face?

I'm back. Yes. Again.

First i decided to write. Then i decided not to. And then, i decided to write about not writing. (Now you know, a decision for me, most of the times, is the thought that is topmost in my head at that point.) But then i decided that would be like coming out of a long comfortable silence that no one minded, to announce the arrival of more silence. And now, apparently, i have decided to write.

So, the silence. Work, sure. Long days, weekends. And thanks to my once broken leg, i have been granted the super-harmful superpower of being able to work from home. All of which boiled down to the citi never sleeping. But, it was sort of fun. After a long long time, i got to code off the seat off my pants. No ten people looking over the design before you get to put one semi-colon. Which of course meant that i had to do the damn thing ten times over. But it was fun. Yes. I'm telling you.

Plus, busy days are easy days. When ghosts from your past come visiting, you can send them back there with one look. Not now, mummy is busy and they go away quietly, no questions asked. Not that you are ever short of excuses, but none is as easy as this.

My back started its 6 monthly (since i can never be sure if bi-annually means twice a year or once in two years) ritual of giving up. I felt like a pregnant woman all of Monday. Only i wasnt, so i couldnt hold my back and limp around and make huge groaning noises and waddle like a duck every time someone called me to their desk. It is being intensively taken care of right now (40 minutes a day i do nothing but. Who can keep that up??) and is almost back to behaving itself.

On a trip to some other place there happened to be a crossword and i happened to go in and happened to see My Friend Sancho. Bought. Finished. Liked. But dont listen to me. I think i'd decided to like it before i bought it. It is, you know, _real_. And funny. Sustained giggles when the mannequin attacks him and a certain muslim... item. And it helped me shoo away the ghosts that weekend. Very effective.

Okay. Back to some silence now. Hopefully not very long.

Jaago re!

Election kitne baje khulta hai appa?

Appa I'll come with you to the booth.

Appa why dont i have an voters card like you do?

Appa i cant find my name :(

Appa you have my passport no?

But the question i'm most proud not having asked this time. Whom are you going to vote for, Appa? We ended up voting for different people, different parties, but probably not very different lives.

I went to the ink dotting lady (the dot i used to dream of as a kid is now a thin long non-descript line) and confidently thrust my thumb to be dotted. I would have died of embaressment but for the following:

1. The guy checking the identity proof stared at my passport for a long time and then hesitantly asked - Madam, is this your Voter ID Card? I think i can see how he got there. Everyone gives me a Voter ID card. This one seems to have given me a book. Why would she give me a book? She doesnt look particularly mad. Plus, it does have a photo. Maybe the EC now gives a booklet full of Voter ID cards? One page per election? Yeah. I better ask.

2. The boss sitting at a faraway chair heard passport and yelled back - Dont accept her passport as identity proof unless it has a photograph!

Live bloging

At this point, i have no idea what this post is going to be about. But i've been silent for too long. My blog cannot dry up and die a neglected death. If i go, i'll go with a bang. A pop, at the very least.

Okay, enough melodrama. Aah, i think i got it now! I'll make this one about culture. No wait. That can be a post of its own, if i ever get around to feeling less lazy. IPL is on. I wish i could make up my mind once and for all whether or not i am interested in cricket. No, i didnt suffer from the great disillusion that most people who loved the game in simpler times seem to have done. I still get excited at the prospect of a match. I follow scores on cricinfo especially if people around are doing so. I read newspaper reports about it with interest. But i cant remember the last time i actually sat through a match. Not even the 2 minutes noodles 20-20 version.

Change. What do you do when call x up starts to appear on your do-to list? Heck, even returning missed calls means having to overcome too much of resistance. You throw your phone away! Good idea no? Really, i dont know why i bother with the thing anyway. I get like one call a month. There is a virus or something that drains the battery so i have to charge it everyday. Everyday. Whether i use it or not. On a good day, my phone lies on my desk all day. Most days its locked in my drawer with my dabba. If i were kinder i'd put it out of its misery. How can my phone have a life if i dont?

Change. Last one, really. Its true what they say. As you grow older, its more and more difficult to change. And not just because you've got used to a way of life. But more because you think you know best. At least for yourself. You think you have earned the right to live your way. Everyone around you should kindly adjust.

Change. Okay fine. I cheated. Kya ukhaad loge? Standing behind you like a rock, promising love and support for life, whatever road you happened to take. Or standing in your way, yelling over my dead body if they think they see you going on the wrong road. Is there nothing in between?