life

Thats my life.

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The Joy of a Letter

Once in two-three days, against all hopes, I go to the reception to check whether miraculously there might be some letter lying there addressed to me. And without failure, there doesnt exist any. An invisible sigh comes from within my heart and I go back to my daily chores.

I still remember the joy of receiving a letter. Since I came into my senses, this is the longest I have stayed at one place. After each transfer, I used to send letters to my friends. The most beautiful moments were when I used to come home from school and find a letter addressed to me from my friends. But eventually the tradition used to fade away.

Now the things have changed a lot. We have mails, social networking sites, chat clients, and what not to stay connected even with the friends we barely spoke to. Compose->type mail->send, thats all we need to stay in contact. And the worst part is, you dont even need to remember birthdays, or anniversaries. They even have e-greeting cards to be sent. I just hope that the process is not so automated that it sends the e-card without you even knowing it. It is all a by-product of capitalism, the idea of mass production. Quantity rules over quality.

What we forget is, the more time and effort we spend on something, the more we get attached to it. The letters carry a personal identity of the writer with them, which is lost in the zeros and ones of the computers. Feelings can never be transferred over the internet, and without feelings all forms of communication are just worthless. They are just a formality.

Nowadays even books are being digitised. I wonder why anyone buys such books. You have to strain your eyes to read them. You cannot smell the scent of the freshly opened book. You cannot see the pages turn yellow when the book gets old. And you will never find some flower or the feather of peacock inside the pages, which someone might have kept inside for you.

We are becoming increasingly impatient. We dont want to enjoy the journey, we need to be at the destination. We prefer a 2 hour flight to a 24-hour train journey. We like to watch a movie on the computer and finish it off soon, instead of going to the theater.

I once had a dream. I was in a world similar to the Axiom spaceship of the movie WALL-E. Everything was computerized. People dint even touch or see each other. They had their computer screen for all communication. I was so scared. In such a world, somehow a girl put her head on my chest, her head touching my chin. I felt a shock through my body and woke up with my heart beating fast.

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And So We Fall In Love…Again!

“How could I not notice you for the past few years? You are so beautiful, so flawless. The innocence in your smile, the stupidity in your actions, the hair groomed or all messed up, all adds to your elegance. When I look at your face, the whole world dissolves and what remains is just you. Oh wait, why is everything dissolving? why are you dissolving?….

Now I am on a horse, whoa! You are standing on a hill covered with green grass waving at me. I ride faster and faster and finally reach you. I lean down, put my right hand around your waist, lift you a bit and kiss you. I can see a tiny drop of tear at the right corner of your right eye. With the thumb of my left hand, I wipe off your tear.You smile at me, and that reminds me how much I love you. Now I say, “I …. hey… why is everything shaking ?“”

“Sanmukh uthja saale, earthquake aa raha hai”.

“Oh damn this earthquake, now I will never find out how I would have proposed her. Another love story gone in drain..”

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Truth Silenced

A week ago, the whole of my facebook wall was painted with patriotism. There were profile pics with Indian Flags, many patriotic songs were posted, and I saw people liking pages like India, and some others with that name in it. And now, barely a week has passed but it seems like it has been ages. There is nothing abnormal in it, nor is it something to be ashamed of. We dont need to be reminded everytime that we are Indians, twice a year is more than enough, and it makes me overwhelmingly happy to get a glance of this patriotism twice a year.

The only thing that concerns me is that what happens to this patriotism? Where does the energy go?Is this energy only enough to post things on the wall and listen to patriotic songs? I have a feeling that these national holidays are like alcohol. You drink it, you get high, you speak your mind out, and then the next day you forget everything. Even alcohols have their hangovers, which these days fail to manifest into us.

Its easy to lecture people, especially youths like us, about the importance of standing for our nation. They very vaguely ask us to do something for our country. They ask us to fight against corruption. They ask us to follow our ethics, speak truth and become a good citizen. They ask us to go into politics and clean up the mess the politicians have created. They even tell us how to do those things, but they forget to give us a very important lesson.

The lesson is: How to survive?

Evil prevails because the truth is silenced. Either by the lies of the evils, or by the silence of the good ones. I see a girl being eve-teased by some boys, and as it is not one of those bollywood movies, if I say something, I risk being beaten by those three boys. The auto-wala is over-charging me, what do I do? Should I call the police? These auto walas have their own union, which pays in lacs to the police monthly, so do you think police would help me? I am travelling with a waiting-list ticket, with say WL-1, now should I give bribe to the TTE to secure a berth? Because if I dont do so, some other person will give, and irrespective of whether he/she has a ticket or not, he/she would get that berth.

These are the simplest cases of everyday life. We are here dealing with the players at the lowest level of the pyramid of evil. Guess what happens when we try to challenge someone at a higher level. There is no reason and I am not optimistic enough to expect that the case would be better than the likes of Satyendra Dubey or Shanmughan Manjunath. Its easy to die when you know that 21 canons will be fired to salute you on your deathbed to acknowledge your sacrifice for the nation, as compared to when you know that although you would be doing something for your country, your death will be treated no better than the deaths of those 1,50,000 other who died on the same day.

I dont have enough courage to stand alone in this kurukshetra, I need someone to hold onto, someone to support me, someone to save me when I am in trouble.

I would like you to have a look at these sites:

http://india.5thpillar.org/

http://ipaidabribe.com/

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And So It Begins

I am not very gud at and so usually I do not resort to descriptive writing where I would tour you through what all happened to me but here I am making an exception for this is the need of this post.My first day at NetApp as an interne deserves a post for itself, and I am too excited to wait for my brain to create an imaginative version out of it.

So the day began and after following the same old routine which I have been following for the 19 years of my life(there have been some exceptions in the last two years 😀 ), I went out of my PG, bought a tea for myself and went on a 1-km marathon to catch a bus. Now I was handicapped with kannada and so the conductor could not understand that I wanted him to let me know where my stop would be, although his money oriented mind did figure out where I would leave the bus so as to give me the ticket. So I ended up at the next stop to my actual location and had to walk back for my office. And finally after filling entries at three security checks one including the reception at NetApp, I finally sat on the sofa waiting for an escort for orientation.

So not very late the escort came, a charming lady. She led us first to the canteen where we were supposed to take free tropicanas and coffees as per our will and then through a bunch of documents which were to be read and signed and that was the time I remembered that I forgot to bring my pen. 😀 So was the case with 1-2 more boys. But as we all know girls are saviours in such cases for they never leave their homes with less than two pens, so our problem was solved as one of our fellow interne was a girl. Then we were taken to be snapped for our ID cards, and there I got my most ridiculous snap taken all thanks to the camerawoman who was asking me questions while taking the photograph. And so finally after completion of all the formalities, I was taken to my team manager and then finally to my team and then to lunch. Lunch was iitg mess style, the only difference being that we had to pay before we ate, and the food was 10 times better.

Then I was provided with my cubicle, with a laptop in it, which I was supposed to carry home with me, a user account to log onto all the shells which I was permitted to and from that time onwards the boring period began, for I was supposed to learn to use the shell but my user account was not configured properly and so I couldnt do a thing. Same was the case with a fellow interne, and so we went on to update status on fb and when that was over we went on to play fussball. At the beginning of the day, that fellow interne was my team mate in the project but by the end of the day, I was shifted to another project. So I got shifted from perl to java. And then at 5:30 we left from the office and I met shikhar bhaiya.

I had some delicious chicken pieces at KFC with bhaiya, a glass of mango juice and a lot of bakar, then he escorted me halfway to my home where soon after entering the room I started creating this boring piece of work. Although boring its still worth it, for all the firsts are worth remembering. 🙂

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The New Boy

So the day has arrived and the new boy has entered into the class which would turn out to be the source of his sweetest memories.

This would be the place where a shorter than dwarf girl would be in war with a footballer, and both of them would turn to be his sweetest friends.

This would be the place where his relationship with a girl would start with her dialogue, “you look like the dobby of harry potter!” and turn into that of best buddies.

This would be the place where though initially indifferent to a beauty with brain, he would later turn to be one of her most caring friend.

This would be the place where he would share punishment infront of the whole school with a boy destined to be in army.

This would be the place where he would meet a harry potter fan, call him ‘Netaji’ and afterwards lose his alocohol-ginity with his help.

This would be the place where his sadness would turn into happiness just by these two words of a girl,”udaas ho?”.

This would be the place where though very boldly taking the phone number of a gal, he would never muster the courage to call her until she does it first.

This place would witness his adolescent infatuations developing and turning into his greatest heartache for he would never be able to express them to the one he has fallen for and would later on regret it maybe for his whole life.

This would be the place where his fatty friend would sprinkle on him the words of wisdom that 96% of the love stories started in school never make it to the end and instead of wondering about the source of this statistic, he would wish that his story would be in the rest 4%.

This would be the place where he would be fascinated by the ribs vibrating sound of fighter planes landing and taking off from a runway nearby.

This would be the place where he would have his first bomb making lessons by dropping sodium in the wet wash basins of chemistry lab.

This would be the place where he would be summoned upon by the principal to question whether he was involved in making any virus and deploying it into the computer lab, and he would very innocently ask the question,”Is it possible for a student like me to write a virus of my own?”

This would be the place where he would be left dumbstruck by the beauties of his class when they show up in sarees for the teachers day and the farewell.

This would be the place he would never forget for the rest of his life.

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So Finally The Better Arrives

Lifes a roller-coaster ride. When I look at the past few months, I cant help but smile. Even in my most imaginative dreams I coudnt have thought of wat all happened in these past four months. And so finally the better has arrived. Now I ll spend my summers in the AC rooms of bangalore(hopefully :D) coding. Have fun with all my friends whose summers are destined in the same city.I can even get a free cook for myself, if his office is not very far from mine. 😉 Its better than Germany I suppose where I would have been the only one in the University, and ofcourse a lot better than hyderabad(2 months without linux :O).

Life is irrational. Nothing follows a logical sequence. Its all about crazyness and weird decisions. Somehow interviewing till 2 in the night, they dropped the plan of taking anyone, although I was quite sure to get through after the interviews. Somehow the cutoff for germany increased to a level higher than I could have afforded. Somehow without giving a thought I chose this company for interview which wound up everything in a single day and let out the results while the other one hasnt even started off with its. Somehow I dint plan to go home from Kanpur, or Id have missed my interview.

So I am happy again. Lifes beautiful again. Lets see what all life has to offer. Now I have something else to worry about. I have a bangalorite whom I have to enlighten about the streets of bangalore :P.

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Failure is not that bad

Life is not a bed of roses, neither is it fair. I had my own moments of victory, I had my own moments of defeat. Victories used to fill me up with a fresh wave of confidence, while the defeats used to suck it all up. The cycle used to go on until recently.

Surprisingly and paradoxically, the last few defeats have had a completely different effect on me. Eventually I gained confidence through them instead of losing it. Being asked for my password to app on my behalf, getting calls which were to make sure that I was fine, receiving messages from half-expected persons, nullified the effects of defeat. I laughed at myself for being so stupid.

“dont worry, lag jayegi intern. And I believe something better is waiting for u. :)”

The last two lines of this message struck me. The last one made me smile for I imagined the smile on the sender’s face and the second last one led me into thinking. My whole life had been marked by last moment decision changes mostly which were not under my control. And everytime, I thanked god for these decisive moment decision changes for they have always proved correct. The courses which I took at the decisive points dint even used to be in the inventory list. I admit that I have a very poor foresight. I dont want to decide where will I be 15 years from now, because even at the end of 14th year I wont be so sure about it. I believe life is not just a set of completely independent co-incidences, but each event in life carries some significance associated with it. And maybe this one has its own share of significance too.

Now I ve started believing that something better is waiting for me. I just have to prove myself by working even harder. I have to increase my level of excellence for the one on which I am standing now is not enough, as has been proved repeatedly. Now I dont fear failures, for I know I have people to catch me if I fall. 🙂

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Valentine’s Day

So another valentine’s day without a valentine. I entered this day cursing the course of Compilers. While the book was trying hard to tell me how to build an LL-1 parser(dont bother about wat it is :P), my heart was wondering about the keywords love, rose, kiss, valentine and hoping someone would let me know the grammar to generate them.

Meanwhile the world around too was entering into this day. Some were calling their bfs/gfs(god knows how they decided which one to call first ;)), some lucky ones might even be kissing their valentines and a not-so-some-but-a-many must have been sleeping or watching a movie or doing something which in no way has anything to do with entering into the valentines day.

But four of my friends, some thousand and five hundres miles away were doing something very different, not unique though, but a strange way to enter into this day. I d refer to them as “The one who pukes”, “The one with many gfs”,”The resistant one” and “The abstinant one”. And lets call this group as the “I am not drunk army”. 500 ml of a clear liquid or “This thing”(now u know what it means) consumed by four minus ones of this army’s jawans. God knows what they were thinking, or were they even thinking, because now there was no scope of going back to their homes. And so to fight for their existence(for they would have been killed if they had gone home in such a condition :D) they had to now encroach upon one of their friend’s hostel-room.So lets look at how each one of them entered into this world.

1.The Ones Who Pukes:- I hope the name is self-explanatory itself, for the “This Thing” was clearing here digestive tracks. She entered the valentines day fresh and new with all the dirt inside her thrown out. 😀 Lucy gal. :P. She had to be carried to the room from the car. And for a note, I was not at all surprised to hear it.

2.The one with many gfs:- Contrary to you guesses, he was not working on any algorithm to decide which one to call first, rather he was reciting the names of maybe hundreds of gals whom he had met, not met, seen, not seen, kissed not kissed, slept with not slept with ;). Maybe it was some hymn to please God valentine, or maybe he was just drunk. 😀 But if the latter is true, I am surprised. 😛

3.The abstinant one:- I know its difficult to relate the word abstinant to this gal, but ya its true. She dint drink the “This Thing”. God knows how it occured, but she dint. And its not hard for me to imagine how this drama gal entered into this day, for she was giving those saas-bahu dialogues where you get to say “I told you so” but telling it so bluntly and tactlessly wouldnt add up to your viewership.

4. The Resistant One:- As the names suggests, this Darua or u may call alcoholic, was not affected by the ill aftereffects of “This Thing”. He was the one arranging for their night stay, by making the owner of the hostel sleep in the verandah. He entered into this day by babysitting the other three(Ya three is correct, because the abstinant one always requires babysitting even though she might not be drunk :P), and calling me and asking me to write a blog post on it.

So, I sighed, I wish I could have been there. Happy Valentine’s Day to all my friends. I love you all. 🙂

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I Dont Care

No idea about you but I believe that these three words in the title when spoken in the same order imply just the opposite of what they literally mean. And maybe they have a greater effect than the negative counterpart: “I care”.”I dont care” means I do care, its just that I am trying to be rude because you hurt me sometimes before which I can still feel. Although my heart is screaming within, that please try to understand how much I care, but maybe its my ego which is stopping me from giving a voice to my heart.

She(it might even be a he) is the one you love. You care for her and want her to reciprocate. Statistically its not even possible for a relationship to hold on. There are a million reasons for things to fall apart, but theres just one reason to hold on. In your case that one reason fails.Maths triumphs. You can see the sly and wicked smile on its face saying, “I told you, the probability of success is negligible”.Your broken.

The problem doesnt end here, its just the beginning. You come to realise that the universe has played a wicked game. The statistically impossible happenned and you fell for the gal who is your class-mate. So now each day you have to enter the class room with a plastic smile which shouts “I dont care”. You try to avoid her eyes. You try to ignore her altogether. When shes somewhere in the vicnity, you try to hear what she might be talking and then suddenly you tell yourself that you are being stupid and you should just ignore her because you dont care for her.Her absence troubles you because you are desperate to know the reason but you feel handicapped for you can’t ask anyone. That very smile of her which used to make you giggle, now just pierces you heart. Or maybe it just touches your wounded heart which got numb due to the pain and so now you can feel a fresh burst of pain. You start being mean to her. You try to make an alternative world somewhere in your dreams where you are with a better gal than her, or where you somehow get this gal back into your life, whichever one you feel soothing and more conforming to your ego.

So the time goes by and it starts healing your heart.Although the wound never heals fully and sometimes it does hurt. But now you are addicted to the pain. You instead start liking it. You kind of feel a euphoria with this pain. You think you have forgotten her. But then one or two incidents happens which erases this misunderstanding. But now “You dont care” or you try to think so. And the life goes on. 🙂

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HUM TUM

So this post is about Hum and Tum, He and She, He by me and She by her(my co-author: ANKITA SHARMA)

He: OK. There was this girl with a beautymark on her left cheek in my class. She was calm but confident. When I first saw her, something happened in my chest. It was constricting, my heart was being pricked by something, my stomach was tingling. I thought, “forget it, it happens with every second pretty girl I see.” 😀
So the days went on and nothing spectacular happened until one day I crashed onto her(by mistake ofcourse :D,and not too hard). I said sorry, she smiled and said, its ok and she went on. But I? Well actually its hard to explain, her lean body and the intensity of crash was not enough to do any physical damage to any of us but it did crash my mental framework as if it got crushed by a truck. The cupid’s arrow struck me and I had fallen, fallen for her. The time stood still, my heart was banging. But for the natural instincts in me to say sorry, I couldn’t have said a single word. It was the first time I was feeling like this.
So now the world was a new and a better place to live in for me. I stole the glances of her face in the class, I tried to listen her voices when she was talking to her friends, and tried unsuccessfully to approach her many a times till I succeeded at last. So now we were in talking terms. Her voice had some mesmerizing element in it which I got addicted to. The glow on her face shadowed the whole world in the background. I used to try to think what she might be thinking about me. I used to think how I could make her happy. I was linked to her each face expression. Her smile made me smile, her frown made me sad, her neglect broke my heart. We became friends thats what she thought but for me she was my reason to smile. I looked for reasons to hear her voice called her for absurd queries, I messaged her all night. I knew I had fallen for her but I was so deep in trouble I never realized.Every expression of her made me fall for her even more. Before I knew I was crazy about her and everything she said. One fine day in one of our conversations on one of her cute little expression of annoyance I let the three most dangerous words slip out of my mouth. She was furious and that was the time I realized I lost her. I apologized but she denied to talk to me. I felt helpless, I lost her…perhaps forever and my heart ached to hear her voice. I couldn’t sleep she stopped taking my calls. I asked her friends to convey my apologies but she had turned to ice and my life had changed for she was not a part of it. I cursed myself for being so stupid to tell my true feelings. and so days and months passed and I couldn’t acknowledge anything or anyone except her. But life is after all not so unfair and one fine day she approached me to leave the past behind and be friends again. I had never forgotten her and after a lot of apprehensions again I proposed to her.

She: So He finally proposes to me.I wouldn’t say I expected him to propose me neither did I wanted to get involved. I tried too hard not to say a yes to his proposal but some people acquire an indispensable place in our life and the heart denies to let them go for the care and the fondness they show and it gets impossible for the brain to reason with the heart. And after lot of days of denying and not accepting here I say a YES. I still wouldn’t say its love I like him ya I like him. He is really sweet, always taking care of me, I can talk and talk to him for hours he is never bored of what I say no matter how irrelevant my thoughts and acts are they always seem cute damn I REALLY LIKE HIM. and so days pass on..and the endless talk continues. He has won over me. I dont feel complete anymore without him and yes I know, I know I LOVE HIM.Well its been two years with him and with a few disagreements I am very happy to have him in my life and blessed be all those circumstances which got us together and I truly madly deeply LOVE HIM. In two years a lot of things hv changed we dont take long strolls for he always has a prior commitment either with friends or his books I am not complaining but I miss the guy I fell in love with I miss him, I am surprised to know how I embarrass him easily and quite often now. We have been fighting a lot and on trivial issues every now and then, my tears made him cry but strangely enough off late he has been the reason for lot of them. He claims we have  grown up and need to be more responsible but I fail to justify with his excuses to not see me. He says LIFE has changed. I say it sure has for the one who is MY life has. I dont how and when so much has changed I always knew life would not always be rosy but I had a stronger faith in our love. I knew in my heart we would face every struggle and come through the tough times though with few scars but nevertheless in love with each other.ALAS! I was wrong so was my heart in believing that HE would be the one who would hold my hand all my life and be there forever and ever.

Today it will be a year since he asked me to part ways for he is not in love with me, for I am too obsessive and he thinks I have changed. I didnt try to explain him anything I didn’t shed a tear but my heart sank the moment I saw his eyes for I could not find any love for me no matter how hard I tried. I knew it was over for him, and as for me he never asked what I wanted how much I wanted to hold on to him. HE had decided about the situation I won’t call it a relation anymore. HE had to move on. Its been a year since I saw him last in the same coffee shop we had come for our 1st date and many more. I still come here often alone just to sit and relive all the moments together.I dont hate him for not loving me. I hate myself for still loving him.YES HE changed my life from the day he proposed me to this date. I hv not stopped thinking about him and I doubt if I would ever..

and dis the story which resides in every girls life chapter and a HE always stays though locked up in the little broken piece of her heart..!!

THE END..

As a footnote: It must be obvious that this is fiction, as I never crashed into a gal UNINTENTIONALLY. ;). And for her part she’s having a wonderful life with her love. 🙂

As another footnote: Tats the reason I want to stay away from love. 🙂