Its been a while

And its the end of the year. Usually around this time i pop up to wax cynical. This year too, that was what i was going to do. But it is also the end of the decade! And that is special!

Because evolution gave us 10 fingers! Ha!

I dont know, maybe it is. When i look back at me in the year 2000, i see a little girl in a little college, very confident that she knew nothing anyone would pay her to do. Not just that one, i can now stand here and laugh indulgently at almost all of her fears and doubts and questions. Not because i am an over achiever, but because i was rather a dork back then. This doesnt mean that i am now doubtless, questionless or fearless. Its just that now I struggle with a different working set of doubts, fears and questions. What hasnt changed is my strategy of dealing with them - one learns to swim when pushed into water. At the end of the next decade, i hope i am laughing indulgently at me, and ready with the next working set!

And now onto some random.

I finally started on the Wheel of Time series. If i'd known the series is called WoT, i might have started it earlier. I'd bought the second book in the series more than a couple of years ago but hadnt touched it, waiting for the first one. The library to the rescue! Its a good book, even though it drags a bit. I also got to meet the tropes of epic fantasy writing - unlikely heroes, get separated, make long journeys where not much happens, ridiculous odds and the Dark Lord - sound familiar? Still, thoroughly enjoyable. I'm fondly fingering the second one now, wondering if my infatuation will carry me through its 600 odd pages.

I fell flat on the road. Carrying two bags and a laptop. For no reason at all.

My teeth have been aching for attention. They were the only part of my body that had withstood the ravages of age. Sigh. Each member of my family has their own dentist and so, i have 3 to pick from. Gah. I hate choices. I have picked the least convenient of them three.

I (well, we) made mocktails! At the mocktail making competition. As part of new year celebrations in the office. And won a consolation chocolate. And realized that i might actually enjoy organizing games more than playing them. The fact that we got disqualified in all the games it was possible to get disqualified in might have something to do with that realization.

Its idiotically cold, my city. The coldest it has been in 20 years, they say. On most days i still manage to get myself out by 6.30 and in the gym by 7. Except for my weekly bunk, which can fall on any day of the week, sometimes two. The gym, surprisingly, is not not boring. Yet. At the end, this one instructor asks us to hold our hands behind, bow down and thank the Almighty for giving you such a beautiful life. One of these days the Ennhh in my head is going to escape.


Edited to add: I donated to Wikipedia! Not much, the minimum only, didnt even come to a thousand. And felt like a hero! I inspired one other to donate, and felt like the hero's sidekick! I also caused another to pause and think about donating. I felt like the stranger in a movie who makes a random comment that changes everything!

I wasnt going to write about this, because like big phillum stars, i dont believe in talking about all the good in the world i do. But Wikipedia is still short of donations so i thought i should give it a shot. If like me, you usually read their message and move on, classifying it as Someone Elses Problem, do pause and consider. I dont think i know anyone who cant afford a thousand rupees. And i'm sure we all agree that the world would be a better place without Jimmy Wales face staring out of Wikipedia!

"I think" this will help

in what you are trying so hard to feel - senti. Thats not why i'm saying it though. Ahem. Here goes.

People are leaving. I dont like it.

Talks

I heard myself speak for the first time today. As part of a recording for a presentation that has been plagued by bad luck of epidemic proportions. I sounded like a child! Why no one has ever told me that, i dont know. With a tinge of Maharashtrian accent*, if anything. Very surreal, the whole hearing oneself speak thing. There was nothing at all in the recording to tell me that it was me speaking. A little bit like when you sometimes look into the mirror and dont recognize what you see.

Presentations. Sigh. I wonder if i'll ever get used to them. Takes me about 4 times the time it should take to prepare. Like Calvin here, it takes me an hour before i'm done griping. Then another hour of getting scared. Then i meander through the material, mostly keeping off the main road, getting lost in the lanes, some of which lead to other universes where the audience is very interested in some personal anecdote precariously connected to the presentation material. Finally, when its just about too late, i gather up whatever thoughts are closest and go talk.

The end result is not as bad as it used to be a long time ago, but its all magic to me, really, because i dont seem to have learnt anything about how to get there.



* Which doesnt mean much, other than the very obvious fact that i absorb the stuff around me. A few days ago, i invented a litmus test for determining the place you belong to. Famous people of whichever place make you feel a teeny bit more irrationally proud of their achievement than the rest, that is where you belong. If someone from Pune (or Maharashtra) achieves something - i feel nothing irrational, though i've lived here practically all my life. But talk about Rehman or Hariharan or V Anand or (you were waiting for Rajnikant, werent you? Ha!) and there it is! The feeling of a tiny bit of their glory being reflected off me.
Idiots from everywhere though, I treat the same.

Zarin made me want to write, with this post of hers. She has taken really good care of the celebrations, what i'd like to get into is the treasure hunt part.
Long long ago when i was at Persistent, some people had organized a treasure hunt as one of the games in a week long celebration of something i dont remember. (Pooja? Harsh, if you ever wander here by mistake?). Though i sucked at it, i really liked the whole idea. So last year when we were to have our annual Diwali thing, i thought i could try that here. With Zarin and Mohsin getting involved, we pulled off a pretty good hunt, i think. Naturally, we repeated the exact same this year too. Minus Mohsin, either because he figured his demotivation (thats what he claims to be there for) was not motivating enough, or because it worked too well on him.

The game in short. There are teams. We give them one clue at a time. Each clue leads them to some place in the office building, where they find a chit of paper with a number written on it. They come and tell us the number and we give them the next clue. First team to get all the clues wins.

The unimaginably stupid thing we did last year essentially boiled down to this: We gave people chits with questions written on the front and answers written on the back! Yes. Fortunately, it wasnt that obvious. Only one team realized it half way through (and made full use of it).

The clues this time:

1.




The easiest (in hindsight. When we are coming up with the clues, we have NO idea how easy/tough/confusing it is going to be).

The Answer: The VoIP phone in the conference room on Alpha (the first floor). Thankfully we found an acceptable image for P :D

The story: We were hanging around in office late Tuesday, waiting for it to be deserted but that was not to be. So we took our chit to Kumar the office boy, no, the office man Friday and asked him to stick it in the conference room. He went in and then realized someone was actually using the conference room. He very casually picked up some random notebook and a tea cup lying on the table and stuck the chit under the table on his way out! The resourcefulness of that man, i tell you. Also, i went in to double check on the chit early Wednesday morning. He had hidden it so well, i couldnt find it!


2. बेहरा कौन


My favourite!

The answer: Oh you want a clue? Translate the first word.

Done?

Yup. Defcon!


The story: Not too many teams got this one without the clue. The best part was explaining the clue to this guy, who represents us at Defcon every year and whose desk the clue led to!

This is me helping some team get to the place:

Me: translate the first word
Some team member: Dumb?
Me: (wanting to him STM then remembering that when i'd originally made up the clue it was goonga kaun until Zarin saved me by correcting it) no no
STM: Mute?
Me: (shakes head)
STM: Deaf?
Me: Now join the two

It doesnt make any sense to STM. He gives up. But i dont.

Me: Come on. Just translate the first half.
STM: Beh? Beh?? Forget it, i'll talk to my team members.
Me: Noooooo dont go!

Yeah, when i set out to help help an old man cross the road, he is sure as hell going to cross the road.


3. Neil Armstrong, Yuri Gagarin, Hillary and Tensing, ???, Shantanu


The Answer: This person from our office who had biked to Leh Laddakh this year.

The story: Not much. Almost everyone got it. Shantanu, who had gone up to Everest base camp, was Zarin's brilliant addition (even though he had left much before she joined). It got the focus from space to our office.


4.



My second favourite, and the one that caused most confusion!

The Answer: No, not the second floor. The conference room where we hold all our Beta upgrades.


The story: Every chit has a number for our convenience only. Since this chit had just one symbol, the number (52) suddenly became very conspicuous. Everyone assumed it pointed to some location on the floor. My desk was ransacked because it was number 252. There was a tiny slip of paper on my desk with a 10 digit number written on it that people assumed must be the thing. I have no idea how it got there. No really. I only wish i was that devious. Others called up extension 52 which happened to belong to one of three people in office at that time who were at their desk. A laptop with asset number 52 was thoroughly dissected.


5.




The answer: Net inside the office i.e. the table tennis table.

The story: This was the first clue to get cracked. That team, despite repeated instructions to not disturb the chit, tore it off and got it along to proudly display to one and all. Of course we sent them back. After that, not too many people got it.

6. Denmark @ office

The one that no one got!

The answer: Clue? That place in office that keeps going under water. Yeah, the parking lot.

The story: At one point, 3 teams were stuck at this clue. Firstly, apparently, water is not the first thing people think of when you say Denmark. Its milk or chocolates or even people from the office who have recently been there. Oops. Secondly, there are three or four things that go under water. Thirdly, the chit in the parking lot was very well hidden.



Who knew i'd enjoy making people run around so much! If the 10 year younger me could have seen me that day, she would have simply stood in open mouthed amazement - I was telling an office full of people what they should be doing! She'd also be appalled at my inability to speak more than two sentences in English. If the 15 year younger me could have seen me though, she'd understand. She was used to hearding a society full of children into the chosen game of the day.

Turbulence

This guy comes to town to launch his book. I'm undecided about whether or not to buy it. He reads out a passage. I end up buying two.

The book being marketed, Turbulence, is on display everywhere. I pick up a copy to get it signed. I'm wondering if i have to buy it first. According to the insides of my head, its a big loophole in their system - what if i get it scribbled on and then not buy it? Apparently they dont care. I loiter around him. He notices and asks if i'm waiting for... I nod and hand over the book. He writes my name and starts to draw something, possibly to give me time to say something. I focus my everything on the drawing, like i'd driven all the way across town to see him draw. He shows me the drawing and says - its a really bad cartoon of a superhero flying at you. I look at it. Yes, its really bad. It looks like a moose - is what i want to say. But i dont, because i dont trust those sentences to come out like that. Bad. Moose. is what i expect to manage. Instead, i giggle in what i hope is an intelligent manner, thank him and walk away.

This is what i would have liked to say if, you know, i had been less me. I love you books. I've read the first two in the GameWorld trilogy. I bought the third one a couple of years ago, but decided on a whim, to read it only when i'd steered my life out of this by-lane it was stuck in. Thank you for writing two more books and helping me cheat!

Here, have a biscuit

It started out as comfortable silence. After all, we have known each other for 7 years now, this blog and I. However now, it threatens to become indicative something deeper. I'm beginning to question if there is anything i can say to you, blog, given that 90 percent of the people who know you also know me. Lest i go too deep into the question and find answers i dont like, let me tell you about my latest gym.

- Its pink. Yes.
- It doesnt have a treadmill.
- Just as i was about to get onto this one machine, the instructor asked me, finger on the ON switch, with urgency and abruptness and utter lack of context only justified if the fate of the world depended on my answer, if i was married.
- At the end of the workout, I was asked to thank the almighty for something i didnt quiet catch, but i suspect might be something more substantial than a good workout.
- The notices around the gym? Pink. One such notice says in soft pink tones that the management can and will break your bloody locker if you dont take you damn stuff out.

But, but. Its different. And that might just do the trick for me.

Plants versus Zombies

Not really. Its books versus TV, but who writes trite titles like that? If i had to choose between a world that could have one or the other, books would win that war, hands down. But its the daily battles that they fight over my time that are more interesting and well, real. Broadband means unlimited TV (of course TV also means unlimited TV, but not as unlimited as Broadband does. What, there are different sizes of infinity, you know.) Landmark means unlimited books* And the winner is determined by a complicated algorithm that factors in, apart from what is to be watched or read, the following:
- how much of the weekend remains
- who is around to judge what i'm watching
- how much i need to feel better by watching miserably complicated lives of others
- how loudly was the little voice in my head telling me i wouldnt finish the book when i shushed it and bought the book anyway
- how much is it a book i would like to like. I'm shallow like that
- what time in the morning did the first cock crow

With the arrival of a library, books were clearly winning over the past month or so. But yesterday, all that changed. Yesterday, we started getting BBC entertainment. Yesterday, we switched on the TV randomly and there was Fawlty Towers going on. Bhai and i thought it had something to with the Pythons and John Cleese came on screen. We squeaked and my mom wondered why she had to have kids who got excited about a middle aged balding man with that moustache**. And i spotted the Vicar of Dibley while channel surfing. TV has hit back and how!

* Landmark unfortunately has gone to meaning squat. I went there when their sale was on, and bought nothing. Nothing. I spent more time and enthusiasm looking at stuffed toys for a "3 year old". I did go over to the science fiction section, but there was no spark. Sigh. The Library. It works swiftly and surely.

** See? There are some moustaches i remember.

To,

To some September born: I am more sorry than i can ever tell you.

To other September born: Happy Birthday! I cannot tell you how much pleasure it gives me, seeing you get old!

To one i hope will be September born: I'm waiting!

To the government: Gimme my money. Dont make me fill forms for it. Please?

To the sutradhaar: Wake up!

To my bhai: Let me tell you how birthday gifts work. Your birthday, you ask, i get. NOT your birthday, you ask, i ask you to get, you forget, i set deadlines, they expire, i set new deadlines, they expire, we build a graveyard for the expired and the dead.

To my 12 year old nephew: No, i am not adding you to my professional contacts on LinkedIn.

To me: %$#^&@**#

To the man. who cried wolf

The next time you decide to cry wolf because you thought you smelled something that vaguely resembled what your granny's cousin, who had seen a wolf once as a child, had imagined one would smell like, pause. Think. Can you see anything even remotely dog-like? Hear wolf sounds? See small animals running scared? Foot prints? I'm not asking for evidence admissible in a court of law here. Just enough to register an FIR will do.

I'm telling you this because there is no point in telling me to use my discretion. You know and I know that the second the cry escapes you, i will be there by your side, patting your hand and nodding my head and in general agreeing with you that that (immobile) sack of potatoes is indeed a big bad wolf.

Yes, another library

Popped up, this time literally a stones throw away from my place. Its so close, and so inside my galli, i dont even have to dress up to go there! This one is in a little bamboo shed in the garden of a bungalow. Its run by the old-ish lady who presumably lives in the bungalow. We have a history, that bungalow and me. The previous owner had a dog with a split personality. It was the fiercest dog we ever knew, but she laughed at us for keeping our distance, insisting all the time that it was a fraaandly dog. Its been years since they moved out, but i still keep my distance. Which is probably why i didnt notice the little library before.

A bamboo shed in the garden, with plants all around, bean bags and a hammock outside, a bright cheerful light inside, books, books, books. Many of them look owned. Read. Loved. Popular fiction, Indian writing, Science, Science fiction, kids books - all the usual suspects. However, the collection is not usual. I see bestsellers sprinkled here and there. But I also see books that would not have made it to any list, that must have been handpicked by someone who knew what he/she was getting.

A friendly old lady who knows what she has. A man who pauses from talking about books to play the flute. A kid sprawled on a bean bag, nose deep inside an Astrix, oblivious to an Aunty who pretends to get offended because he has forgotten his manners and not greeted her.

I want to talk to her, tell her she has a great collection, ask her if all these books are hers, if she has read them all. I want to tell the man with the flute who said he'd just bought The Graveyard Book that he is going to love it. But i dont. One, because i'm me. And two, i'm not going to join her library. I've already joined a "big bad corporate one". At some level, i think i've cheated her. I slink out when she is busy trying to understand what the man with the flute is saying about bar-code readers.

I walk the ten steps to my home thinking i've finally found one snapshot of old age that doesnt scare the hell out of me. I'd like to be that old lady. I'd like to lie on the hammock while people come and lose themselves in my collection. Only, i dont know many people who can lose themselves in two shelves of chiefly science fiction.

New retirement plan - I need to diversify my assets!

Why growing up sucks

The trouble with trying to be an adult, in getting your backside off your comfort zone and trying something new, is this. Once you are done, you still want to rush to mummy and show her your drawing. You still want her to look at the box and two lines you have drawn and tell you its the best damn horse in the world. You want your efforts appreciated, even though you know, and she knows, and she knows that you know, that by this time you should be drawing horses that look ready to jump off the page.

OMG!

OMG! OMG!
Please bear with me! I think it'll be a while before i can stop talking in exclamation marks!
I just joined a library!
What do you mean, that doesnt deserve such excitement!
Do you have any idea how that changes my life!

You know the truckloads of pressure you are under, when every book you want to read, you have to buy? You cant just pick stuff up on a whim. The depleting bank balance, the filling up shelves, you are answerable for it all! I feel terribly guilty for the 10 percent books that i have bought and am almost certainly not going to read. I fear they will go through life with abandonment issues, all because i didnt know what i wanted.

But now? I can pick up stuff without any consequences whatsoever! Except for loss of time, but who cares about that! I can read crap! My dad can read crap! For 200 a month! Eeeeeeee! The remaining exclamation marks and the accompanying words will come with bullet points.

• They have a pretty good YA section! Percy Jackson! Artemis Fowl! Phillip Pullman! All stuff i want to read but dont want to buy!
• They have the Wizard of Earthsea! This is one of those books i cant not read, even though i am unlikely to like it much. (So what if i bought and read it and didnt much like it about a month ago. I'll never have to do that again!)
• They have the first book in The Wheel of Time series! For some reason, i bought the second one first and there it lay. In the "unlikely to read' pile. Until today!
• They have all P.G. Wodehouse (not that i mind buying those) and all Terry Pratchett! (i've already bought most of those, also i dont know what they were doing in the pre-teen section).
• They have 18 branches or something in Bangalore! Dont ask me why i care!
• I'm hoping the library will help me come out of my comfort zone. Try something other than SFF.

There. I think the exclamations have gone. To all those friends of mine sitting in Europe and showing off their public libraries, Ha! I now have a private one.

Landmark, my love, looks like you might finally have some competition. Also, looks like i might be able to keep my hands off the second season of 24 after all.

24, one season later

When write my own TV series no, i promise not to


1. Make it 45 minutes long. Its an entry barrier for people starting late and wanting to catch up. I also double promise not to take Anil Kapoor in it.

2. Have dialogs like this:

Hero: Do blah.
Any Other Character: I cant, because of these perfectly legitimate reasons.
Hero: DO BLAH.
The Same Other Character: Fine.

3. Kill people off randomly. Hell, i'll probably not kill people at all. There can be so much drama in life, why bring death into it at all?

4. Make the hero dig a deeper and deeper hole for himself and then when i get bored, pop him out clean through the other end of Earth.


5. Make the audience feel manipulated.


Which is probably why no one will watch my series. Which is a good thing, i sometimes think, when i imagine the humongous number of man hours spent watching stuff on Television. I'm going to try and stay off Season 2, but September end is so farfaraway, i dont know how i'll survive.

For the very first time in my life

I made maggi today. Fine. You can pick up your jaw from the ground now. Despite the very many years i have spent on this earth, its not really all that surprising given that i have never, as my mom pointed out, had to cook for myself. Home or hostel. Food has generally been SEP. It wasnt bad, the maggi, although it turned out looking more like something made out of little cylindrical tubes of rava. In my newbie enthusiasm i broke the maggi into tiny little pieces, not one of which were of slurp-able length. Aah, one lives and learns.
One has also stooped down to blogging about what one had for lunch. As long as one has come this far, one might as well register one's grievance against the content on the maggi packet.

What the hell were you thinking, Dear Sir/Madam,* when you printed on the back of the packet, not instructions on how to cook whats inside, but long touching stories on how a 5 year old made maggi on his ownsome lonesome for his Mom's birthday? Did no good, I'm telling you, not to the dish i ended up making, and definitely not to my ego!

* Dont you wish all letters could start like this?

A (short?) story

John Scalzi had this fanfic contest a few months ago. I sent in an entry, just like that. Now that the results are out and i didnt win (sniff, sob, bawl and all), i thought i should put it up here. Apart from the obvious reasons, this is also because stuff i've written that is not on the blog tends to get lost. In defunct mailboxes and sites that have since disappeared and machines that have been formatted. (Okay, so its happened once, but if i dont learn from my mistakes whats the point in making them?)


So, yes. I am telling you this post is more for storage purpose. You are welcome to go through my basement, but you are also welcome to not. So many disclaimers because, umm, it is rather long. Also, it doesnt have a title.

Has the Outside always been so pretty, John wondered as he lay lazily on a chair made for just that. He’d been trapped for weeks in the Inside of some "top secret project he cant tell you about". Today he had finally come out of it and decided to spend the day reacquainting himself with this world he inhabited. It had started well. The Sun and the blue sky he had taken in without much of a shock to his system. He’d then moved on to trees. He didn’t look particularly happy about their existence now. He couldn’t believe how lucky they were, being able to make food simply by standing in the sun. Why evolution had to give up that line of research to take on one that led to his 10 fingers with opposable thumbs he’d never understood. Hunger had been gnawing at his insides for over an hour but there was no way he could get himself out of his chair. And all those trees showing off were not really helping.

Wil looked under the bed for the three hundredth time. Nothing. Does anyone have such a clean under-bed anymore, he wondered sourly. He almost wanted a monster to be under it, with his script in its dirty yet non-salivating jaws. Because then he’d have something to do, an enemy to fight, a script to rescue, and in the end, a rehearsal to go prepared to, happily ever after. Now, all he could do was look at empty under-beds. Sure, yesterday’s gaming had been pretty wild, but he couldn’t believe the script, the script for tomorrow’s rehearsal, the script without which he’d just have to go there and be a pretty face, that script had been involved. He could imagine the producer’s icy tone. What is that you say? A big bird came and took your script? You could have respected us enough to make up something more imaginative. A crawling horse, a flying kitten, something? Yes, he had to find something.

And as it usually happens, when the right thing to do is not the fun thing to do, people run away to the land of excuses. The place where all excuses come from, brought to life by human need. To do something they shouldn’t. To get out of something. To beat common sense and responsibility and convention and accepted wisdom. To be. To not to be. Stock excuses, now those are easy. Most people can get them off the top of their head. Bad traffic, my alarm didn’t go off, the wife says no. It’s the creative excuses, handcrafted to fit your situation and none else that need to be worked on. For those you need to go deep into the land, finding little pieces that fit the big picture in your head, shaving this, sawing that, refining the big picture all the time till you end up with a piece of art. Art, now that is not formed by fitting lego blocks as per instructions. In the land, you will not find pieces that fit together. If that is what you want, the stock excuses department is that way, have a good day. But if you look at a piece hard enough, you can turn it into what you need. It is a dying art, this, one only people with some imagination and whimsy continue to practise.

John roamed the lands, his hunger forgotten in the excitement of all that was possible here. Strange things were all around him and he was having fun trying to see how each might work as an excuse. There were trees here too, but they didn’t look like they were taunting, they looked to be showing him possibilities. Somewhere in the murky recesses of John’s brain, an idea was born. It wasn’t even fully formed yet, and already he could see it had taken control and was changing him. He stood still, scared, not in a bad way but in an oh-my-god-is-this-really-happening-what-does-it-mean-i-haven't-even-thought-it-through-but-how-cool kind of way. He let a few minutes pass before he looked at his hands. Yes. Green. Chlorophyll-ed. He went and stood out in the sun. Food.

Wil closely examined the broken finger. Not his. He was fascinated by everything around him. He took in one thing at a time, sure that the whole picture would overwhelm him. Done with the finger, he looked around and saw the clown sweater. His clown sweater. His INFAMOUS clown sweater. He put it on. And smiled. The world seemed familiar again.

Wil then moved on to larger objects He found a Superman Cape hanging on a tree and put it on. It went really well with his clown sweater. He jumped from trees and ran really fast and in general was the Superman Wil aged ten would have been. Which is when he saw a pair of eyes looking at him from within a clump of bushes. "Here, here, come out," he tried. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if just a pair of eyes came out. The eyes stayed. He took his cape off and waved it around like a Matador. The eyes pounced.

It was on him, whatever it was. Cat? Wings?? Horn??? Start again, his brain said. And this time, no naming body parts. A cat. No, call it kitty, sounds cute and fuzzy and not at all like an evolution defying creature put together by hand. So, a kitty. And at the back... Pegasus. And that from a Unicorn. Recapitulate. Kitty. Pegasus. Unicorn. Kitty. Pegasus. Unicorn. Kitty... PuTTY! "Here PuTTY, here PuTTY". PuTTY, in the meantime, had been mooning over the clown in his sweater, purring and making other happy kitty noises.

It was the kitty John saw first. He was already smiling when he saw the clown on the sweater. He knew there was only one way that sweater could end.

"Hi Wil," he said, without looking up.

Eh?

Well, Wil didn't actually say Eh. But his face did. It rearranged itself into an Eh?

"It’s John." Eh? "Scalzi." Eh? "Velvet Wesley Crusher." Ah!

"John! What are you doing here? Did you see my kitty? Isn't it just the most amazing thing? Look at those magnificent wings. And horn! I'm calling it PuTTY...," Wil prattled on.

‘PuTTY’ was sitting on all fours, looking into the clown's eyes. John reached Wil and raised his hand for a high-five. Next thing he knew, the magnificent wings had come down and scooped Wil up in one graceful motion.

Wil was now sitting on PuTTY, face rearranged to spell EH???

"I come in peace," said John, lifting both his hands up.

"Green Peace!," exclaimed Wil and went back to an Eh?

John tried using his experience with cats to make friends with PuTTY. Granted, PuTTY wasnt exactly a cat, but 60 percent of it was, he knew nothing about horses and he had to start somewhere. John gathered some catnip leaves from nearby and gave them to PuTTY. PuTTY responded, which made Wil calm down a little. His brain finally got around to processing the message his eyes had been sending him for a while now.

"Umm.. John?"

"Yeah?" said John, who couldn’t take his eyes off PuTTY.

"You are green."

"Yeah," said John distractedly.

"Not exactly your colour, you know?," Wil tried again.

"Look," John said getting irritated. "Its about a little more than looking pretty, okay? Here, let me show you," he said and walked towards a patch of sunlight. "Thats all i have to do for food. For the rest of my life. Stand. Chlorophyll-me up, baby! Millions of years ago, two roads diverged in the woods that day," he thundered, "and today they meet in me."

"ZOMG! They will have to create a whole new position for you in the food chain! Wait, will it still be a chain? Cycle! Tree?" Wil wondered, as the implications of what he was seeing hit him. "John?"

"Something’s wrong," growled John. "I don’t feel full." "Ears," squeaked Wil. John felt them and realized they had grown. Pointy. Lumps were sprouting all over his body. "Greenskin," he croaked, before falling over in pain. This tended to happen with improbable excuses. They decayed to the nearest stable state - something that required minimum suspension of disbelief.

Wil’s brain had had enough. Had too much, in fact. So it decided to forget what it knew and start from scratch. Take what it could see as given and work from there. So, John was turning into an Orc. Okay. What do i know about Orcs? Oooh, what do i not know! Here was familiar ground. Here was where the What kind of a Orc are You quiz he’d scribbled on the back of his script would save lives. Orcs came in all shapes and sizes and most importantly, attitudes. Dealing with them depended entirely on which mythology they subscribed to.

"John? Are you in there? Listen! I’m going to get you out of this. Joooohn!" he screamed, as John (or Orc?) got up with a roar that startled PuTTY who jumped and up went Wil. John had made considerable progress towards Orcdom and had acquired an armour, a spear and the above mentioned roar. Orc was marching towards him slowly, fighting with John for each step. Wil shouted out his first question. "Would you like to eat me?"

John knew his share in John/Orc was shrinking. The power of Orc was overwhelming; all he wanted to was to give in. Focus, he told himself. Focus on something that’ll remind you that you are human, that there is good in you. He saw the horn on PuTTY. Thats it! What was better than a Unicorn horn to remind you of being noble and good? Orc meanwhile had reached a very similar conclusion for very different reasons. John and Orc march as one.

Wil noticed the increase in speed. "JOHN," he yelled out. PuTTY meanwhile had prepared itself for battle. And also, apparently, him. Wil found himself with a spear in his hands. Desperate, Wil yelled out his second question. "Whats you favourite colour?"

John/Orc had almost reached PuTTY. Already, John felt clearer, more focused. All i need is that horn, he thought. PuTTY had given up all pretensions of being a soft kitty. It hissed and spat. Its eyes shone with a manic glow. John/Orc charged. Kitty sprang. Wil aimed his spear at the Orc’s arm and yelled out his third question. "Does this hurt?"

Somewhere, a Volcano let go.

Wil opened an eye. Nothing green or dead. Encouraged, he opened another. He saw the ground rushing beneath him. Realized he was still on PuTTY but no longer trapped by its wings. He let go. Fell off PuTTY and rolled harmlessly into a clump of grass. Opened eyes. One. Two. Saw John/Orc standing over him. Screamed and ran. Or tried to.

"Stop," said John. John. Not John/Orc. John.

Wil turned back. John. Not green. Close. Open. Still John. Not green. Breathed.

"What happened?" he asked. "Looks like PuTTY found another toy at just the right second," said John, nodding in the direction of the volcano. And there it was, flying just above the lava, dipping its horn in it, making pretty designs and in general back to being a kitty. "And you?" "I managed to hold on to PuTTY’s horn for a second before it got distracted by the volcano," said John. "Turns out that was enough." The two friends slapped each other on the back, did a little jig and left. They didn’t say good bye to the land. They’d be back. They’d been there before.

John was full. Hell, if he had been an Orc... okay, too early for Orc jokes. Wil had fed him till he was ready to burst. Wil cleared his throat. John knew what was coming.

"Yes, Wil?"

"Will you be my excuse for tomorrow’s rehearsal?"

Virtual reality

It is a cloudy weekday afternoon. The kind you've always wished you could spend sprawled on a bed with a book, a coffee and some conversation.
"I'm feeling sleepy," i tell him.
"Welcome to the club. I am its President," he says.
We fight over that a little, then go on to wonder if there is any way we could sell our sleep to all those insomniacs and old people out there who dont have any. Donate even. It smacks of communism, i think he likes it.

"Have you heard Pee Loon?" i ask him. He lives under a rock as far as Bollywood is concerned, and i am his dealer of new hindi songs. He comes looking for a fix once in a while when he is completely out of stock, and i'm usually able to supply. "Not today," he says. He is on some weird Kumar Shanu and Abhijeet trip and is not in the mood for anything else. Which i might have otherwise let go, but he has just said no to Mohit Chauhan. I'm offended and i let him know.

He is stirred enough to defend his choice. "Romantic songs of the 90's, it doesnt get better than Kumar Shanu". I tell him to sleep it off. I cant really fight because i dont remember a single K.S number. "Let me help you out," he says, realizing this. "Badalon mein chup raha hai chand kyon". Damn. He doesnt kid around, this one, he has started with the big guns. "Der se hua par pyaar to hua re". I shrug, i havent heard. "Ek din aap you humko mil jayenge". He scores. "Tum Mile, dil khile". "Aye kaash ki hum hosh mein ab". I'm down and out.

After some silence filled with his gloating he asks casually, "So, what were you saying about Mocho?"

And then for a while i hear nothing but the sound of several pieces falling into place. At the end of which i'm embarrassed, sure, but i'm also in a happy place in the distant past. We had this senior in college whom everyone called Mocho. A quiet fellow, what little i saw of him, but any time he made an entrance, people stopped what they were doing to greet him with an "Arre Mocho". I never figured out why, but they all seemed really happy to see him. And thats where i was, in college, one of my happy places, probably my happiest. I wonder how i never asked why they called him that. Mocho. Its such an awesome nickname. I want my Mohit Chauhan to have it.

"Let me help you out some more," he says. "Ek meetha marz dene aana tum kabhi". This is ridiculous. Mocho has sung songs i dont know about?? "Its in Welcome to Sajjanpur," he says smugly into my silence. "You must have heard Guncha", he says. I shake my head. "Are you going to keep shaking your head till i come to Masakali," he asks finally. It is then that i realize that that is exactly and entirely my big war plan. I cant think of a single Mocho song other than that. I dig deep and come up with "Pehli baar mohabbat ki hai". And then i submit "Pee Loon" in case he'd forgotten.

By this time he has lost interest in the fight. For all practical purposes, he is fighting from both sides. He decides to get personal. Its good strategy. It'll either make the fight interesting or put an end to it. "What lyrics. Pee Loon. Aisa lagta hai nasha karke aaya hai". Thats it. "Download the song. Listen to it. You can then apologize to me," i say and walk away.

He apologizes later. The song has spoken louder than words. Mocho has won.



A few points:

1. Does the fact that this conversation took place over chat, with me sitting in my office in Pune and Monu in his department in Kharagpur make it any less real? (Other than the communist inclinations i imposed on him. Those are entirely my imagination). Chats are my primary (and for the most part only) medium of social interaction these days, and in spite of all its limitations i'll be damned if i let anyone tell me its anything less than face to face talk. Different, sure. But not real? No way.

2. I hope this post has put an end to all the (very valid) cribs about my being cryptic.

3. I also hope none of my seniors read this. After 5 years of no interaction preceded by a year of strictly necessary interaction, it'd be damn weird if they saw themselves featured in my happy place.

4. Monu's insistence on putting an h in Kumar Sanu's name reminded me of Pronoy Roy. He was once interviewing Amartya Sen and insisted on pronouncing his name as Omartyo. Which irritated me immensely! I wished Amartya Sen would stop answering his questions and tell him - "I dont know whom you are talking to. That sure as hell isnt my name!". Stupid, i know, but there it is.

Expectations

I rejoiced when your ideals tumbled
From the impossibly high ledge you'd placed them on
Your expectations of people would fall with them, i figured
And help me rise in your eyes

But you held on to them, expectations
Like nature, you abhorred vacuum
So every time an ideal fell
I was to rush to take his place instead

Monsters Inc

She'd seen it just once, the monster in the cupboard, but it had been enough. She'd kept away. It hadn't been easy. A cupboard was precious, it was supposed to contain bits of your life, neatly arranged. This one not only ate up the space on its inside, but also a healthy bit of the outside. Bits of her life lay scattered in her room, with nothing to be found when she went looking for it.

Finally, after a lot of time and life and negative space and dreams of courage and victory, she decided it was enough. Yes, monsters were huge scary things that devoured, but if that was how it had to be, at least she wouldn't have to clean up this mess. And if not, well, she had the cupboard for life!

As she stood with trembling fingers on the cupboard handle, she realized that life had once again played one of its little jokes. She'd actually be disappointed if there was no monster.

And with that

Status quo has left the building.

Naan ITR Kadavul

(translates to: Me the Income Tax Returns God)

Did it myself this year too. They make it more and more saral each year, really. Let me give you the highlights of this year's journey, which, if all goes well, will end tomorrow at the IT office.

1. Filled the form for the wrong assessment year. Which, in the 6th year of doing your taxes yourself, one should not make mistakes about.

2. Paid tax on bank interest
- added quarterly interests incorrectly (yes, used a calculator) AND
- filled the wrong challan AND
- for the wrong assessment year
Ended up paying more tax than necessary.

3. Wrote an application requesting the assessing officer to correct the assessment year. Dad dictated. I typed. Saved it in notepad. With the name "stupidity". Printed it. The application now has the word "stupidity" at the place traditionally reserved for the pilliyar shuzi (i.e. in the top center)

4. Dad and I got bhai to fill the ITR form. For the wrong assessment year. He was so exhausted by the end of it, i dont think he is filing returns again. Ever. Today dad brings up the point that he may not exactly be an employee.

5. Assess became the word i have most frequently typed/written over the past couple of days. Even more than semi-colon, which is probably not a word anyway? And every time i write that word, the first 3 letters stand out in bold and do a little dance.


Who says Gods dont make mistakes.


P.S. Next year the plan is to have a home loan. Whether i have a home or not. I have heard ITRs get terribly complicated if home loans are involved. So my ego will shut up and let me dump the whole thing on an agent.

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.