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And here comes the winters

Winters are the most romantic and the most romanticizable of all the seasons. Ya dancing in rains in sexy ofcourse but theres a lot more that can be done in winters. The fog and the mist, the chilly winds and the steamy breaths. What can be more beautiful?

Winters are times of closeness. You dont mind keeping the laptop on your lap as you enjoy its warmth. You dont mind watching a movie cuddled into a single blanket as it keeps everyone warm. And most importantly, you wont mind sitting next to a rickshaw wala to enjoy the warmth of fire lit beside the roadside.

Also winters are times of inactivity, laziness. And when sometimes I wake up at 1 in the afternoons,(yes I do but only on weekends. 😀 ) and see the light of sun dampened by the fog, I feel I haven’t missed much of this new day. I don’t feel guilty of my lazyness.

Winters are the best reflection of how human life works. If you are one of the well off ones, winter is a bliss for you have all the means to enjoy it to fullest, but if you are on the other side of the economic scale, its nothing more than a nightmare. Also romanticizing is a hobby when you are secure enough with less worries of the basic necessities of life. Its sad but its true, and bare truth is always better than hundred candy coated lies.

And as they say about life, nothing lasts forever, not even the cold November rain. Life is measured not by the number of springs enjoyed, but by the number of winters endured.

Cheers for the winters, and lets welcome it with this song.

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Outward Bound Learning

I have heard that the best way to cure writer’s block is to write, however poor the writing turns out to be. And so precisely that’s what I am trying to do in this post, so my apologies. Also this insomnia is driving me crazy and in a bold step of trying to compile my own Linux kernel and trying to upgrade Ubuntu on that kernel, I ve rendered my laptop unbootable. So I am writing this post on a recently bought android based smartphone, ( was it boastful enough? No? Next time I should try harder. ) 😀
The thoughts which I would be pouring down in this post is related to the outward bound learning we underwent a couple of days back. We were taught some lessons on teamwork, honesty and other business ethics by the means of practice and introspection. But the doubt I have is how many of us will really follow, or even remember them. It’s normal human tendency to follow the habits which are embedded somewhere inside his/her subconscious, especially when we talk about habits that come into picture during the times of stress or panic, the times when we do before we think. We are not robots to follow a set of instructions each and everyday.
So if someone really wants to cultivate the good habits, he/she needs to practice them until it becomes a part of subconscious, once it becomes, its just one of our many habits which would surface naturally when the circumstances demand. It would then become a part of the personality!
The solace is in the fact that once something enters the mind with practical experience, it doesn’t go out so easily.

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Catching The Bus

Its often heard that each city has its spirit, a feeling which makes living in the city a unique experience. Throughout my life, the four years I spent in Guwahati has been the longest I had ever been in one place, and what I can assert is that all these places had their own different ways of life.

Like any relationship, our relationship with a city is a two way commitment,(however infidel it might be ). The city has a way of life, and when we move into it we try to adjust to its way and which eventually becomes our way of life. For the past four years the pace of my living had been the slowest I had ever encountered. I dont mean that guwahati is a slow city. With little certainty I mean that IIT Guwahati is a slow community and with all certainty I mean that I was too lazy.

However now I have been picked up from the cozy indolent lifestyle and thrown into what we can ascertain as the fastest paced city in our country(or in world???Though I know I can face a lot of contradictions here :D). I want to catch the green colored DTC bus, but inspite of running hard I am missing it daily. I guess I am too slow. But its not depressing, its just fascinating to see things going around at a breakneck speed,(literally 😀 ). Next time I go to catch a bus, I should take a walking stick with me, so that when I lag behind I could stretch the stick and hook it in a window of the bus.

I know once I manage to catch the bus, my life will change forever.

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The Perfectionist

‘Perfection’ is a word that intrigues me. Here and there I can see a lot many, if not all people pursuing their goal to attain perfection, but the more they try, the more it eludes them. However, the use of the word ‘elude’ is a bit unfair here, as these people are actually getting better at whatever they are trying to master, its just that the more they get to know about their own capabilities the more they aspire to attain in future.

Interestingly, when I look at the ‘near-perfect’ things around my life, I kind of get nervous. I hate monotony, and once build all the near perfect things acquire monotony. Consider the ‘Delhi Metro’ for example. Will it keep running till eternity with the same announcements, same opening and closing of doors without any accidents? Not that I wish this brilliant system to fail but the thought makes me sick that it will keep on running forever.

The words ‘infinity’ and ‘eternity’ scare me. And though I admit that I am a disappointment when it comes to  maths, but thats not the only reason. I cannot comprehend that fact that this universe will last for eternity, that the empty space around us is infinity, and that owing to the aftereffects of the big bang, our universe will keep on expanding into that infinite empty space. Its just makes me feel so insignificant.

Perhaps thats the reason why people believe in god. They dont want to be left alone as a tiny insignificant piece of hydrocarbon but need to feel that they have been created for a purpose. I agree that I dont have the intellect to decide whether god exists or not, because if he/she does exist and he/she did indeed create this universe, then we are no more than subjects bounded within the framework of his/her experiments. Debating about god’s existence would like the following scenario.

In the context of Operating Systems(a field in computer science)

Process 1 to Process 2: Do you believe in Operating Systems?

Process 2: yes.

Process 1: Do you believe that there is an almighty power that allocates you memory, cpu, when you require and takes them away at its discretion without any consideration for your opinions. If that is true, explain me why there is so much inequality in this system, why are most of the processes idle waiting for CPU or many of them have been swapped out due to lack of pages. Does this reflect the fairness of you Operating System?

What I believe is in the end nothing matters. If there’s an afterlife, I wont be remembering any of the stuffs I did in this life in the same way I dont remember what all I did in the previous life if it existed. So practically I have just one life to live, a life of just 50-70 more years. Now, I could live this life convincing myself that there is no god and I am solely responsible for my actions and punishing myself for my failures even though I might not deserve the punishment, thus making my life miserable. Also in this case I miss upon the opportunity of being grateful to someone, which to my experience is the most satisfying act of all. And the other extreme is to rely totally upon god for each and every decision of life, and trivially making the life worthless for myself and even others (as followed by religious fanatics). But there is a third option that I follow(and which most of the common people do with or without realising). The option is to believe in god, to thank him/her my for successes, to blame him/her my for failure, but not to an extent where my actions are compromised. I try to do the best I can for what I aspire, the result, I leave it on the uncontrolled circumstances, i.e. GOD.

And believe me when I say this, “I am a happy soul.”!

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The Writing Drought

Its been a while since I wrote something, anything. You might be in an impression that adobe has brought forth the boring workaholic engineer inside me and killed what little bit of art I had but I would deny all such accusations. I am not short of ideas, its just that I am not getting time for myself. To be true, I am not even trying to. Although I hope things will change in future.

Meanwhile I had a realization which I wish to share. Here at adobe we are provided with a lot of independence– flexible timings, sports and gym facilities, free food– and this true in almost all the IT multinationals. Its hard to comprehend at the first look that how a company could manage to build such wonderful products with these levels of independence. The answer is: the choice of people they choose to hire. They hire people who love challenges. And what they need to do is just toss a problem in front of them like a piece of meat infront of a tiger and watch the show. The piece of meat is torn into pieces and at the end not even the bones are left. Its no wonder that the best softwares in the world are free and open source.

So this post was just to clear off the dust from my desk. I hope once the cleaning is done and the desk organized, I will be a bit more disciplined when it comes to writing. Enjoy life. Best of Luck.

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The 7 Legged Spider

One of the problems of having 8 eyes is that we are not sure as to how to wink. With 4 eyes on each side of the face there are 15 possible ways. Each clan has its own signature winking style(In this globalised world, clans are analogous to what you call as cultures, I am not using the world culture as the number of different practises we have can be counted on fingertips). In our clan, we wink by closing the top, the second and the bottom one.

The art of eye-contact also varies with clans, and is more strictly followed. As we are essentially clothless, looking anywhere but the eyes might lead to troubles, you know what I mean. 😀 The problem of eye contact is more complicated than that of winking. You people have only 1 set of eyes and so you dont appreciate the sophistications involved. Imagine you are being photographed by a number of cameras simultaneously. Now when you look at the pictures, you will notice that in one and only one picture, your eyes are looking at the camera, in all others you will be looking somewhere else. That is the problem that we have to face, if the spider you are talking to and you do not look at each other simultaneously, you both are at a loss.

Now let me tell you how eye contact works out in our specie. There are three phases in the process 1) Initialisation, 2) Synchronisation and 3) Execution. Whenever two spiders or a group of spider meet, one of them, usually the host announces that he is about to initialise. You see with 4 set of eyes, we have a nibble. The top pair is the MSB of the nibble and the bottom one is the LSB. Opening an eye is 0(default state) and closing is 1(excited state). So in the initialisation phase, the host signals a 16 bit code by opening and closing some pairs of eyes to signal a code, and signalling 4 such codes at the intervals of 2 seconds. So this 16 bit code indicates which type of eye contact mechanism is to be used. Now that every spider knows which mechanism is to be used, the host conveys an 8-bit synchronisation code(01100000), every spider tries to synchronise to the host’s eyes using this synchronisatin code. And once all of them are synchronised host conveys a 4-bit all one code(1111) and then starts the execution phase in which the eye-contact mechanism decided in the initialisation phase is put into actual execution. Now one might wonder why such a complicated mechanism? The reason is that in the dark ages, when different clans were isolated, each of them generated their own mechanism, but as the world got smaller, and as no one was willing to drop their identity and adopt others’, such a mechanism had to be created.

However, we have one benefit over your specie. A handicapped spider like me is not stigmatised as in your case. Now you might think what difference a lost leg would make, when 7 others are working fine. This is where you underestimate the world around you.

Let me give you an idea of the intricate art involved in weaving the spider net. Its similar to a painter painting on a canvas sheet. We both have to select a canvas(a suitable place to weave the net), we both have to have brushes(legs in our case, imagine the trouble a painter encounters when he has to paint with one of his brush missing), and for both of us the first stroke matters the most. Both our livelihoods depends on how perfect the painting is made, in my case its an even direct relation. And both of us have to keep aside the thoughts of livelihoods when creating our arts to generate our best masterpieces.

Everything is an art, even the engineering which you are so proud of.

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Good-Bye

Recall the experience when you have a big presentation in the morning, and you are suffering from a “can’t-sleep-before-3”-nia. Now if you are like me, in the morning when the alarm rings, you would press the snooze button. Usually these 10 minutes of snooze feel like heaven, its like I am mogli in the cozy lap of balu in a jungle with everything made of honey and my nostrils are filled with the sweet damp smell of honey. But now it becomes a different story altogether. These 10 minutes become the most painful 10 minutes of my life. A dream recurs to me again an again like a hundred times in these 10 minutes in which I have got up and entered the class prepared to give the presentation. And the most painful moment is when the alarm again rings at the end of 10 minutes. Now I have to wake up in any case. And the lack of sufficient sleep the last night lends a lot of tiredness to my body and so when I try to wakeup I feel like my soul is trying to rip off my body to get out of it.

I have been living here in iitg for 4 years and now the alarm has rung. Now its the phase of those 10 minutes of recurring dreams following by the 10th minute of painful goodbyes. But its only after that painful process of waking up is accomplished, one gets to give that presentation of his/hers to prove his/her mettle. Dreams, however beautiful they might be, are still dreams. To solve the real world problems, we need to wake up.

I have made a lot many mistakes while being here in iitg. And this place was generous enough to forget my mistakes and encourage me to look forward into the life. I have learnt a lot much from those mistakes, and I know that the outside world won’t be that generous.

Good-Bye everyone! Hope to meet you all at the other end someday or the other!

P.S. : I couldn’t do justice to the post, but I think to write a  post which would do justice to these moments, I would have to transcend my own abilities.

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chaos

Almost all the time its a total chaos in my mind and I have always failed to make a sense out of it. There are just so many thoughts in my mind, what I wanted, what I got, what I want, what I will get. Forgetfulness is a bliss, and I am lucky to be the blissful person as I cant hold on to a thought for more than a while.

I feel like thoughts are simmering in my mind. Like when you boil water with tea leaves. Every now and then, one of the herb gets along with the convection and pops up onto the surface only to be noticed for a while and then dives into the oblivion. It is then replaced by some other one at some other spot. But there are some small pieces that have kept themselves aloof from this whole popping up and diving down business, and I can clearly see them through the clear water sitting right at the edges. I wish I could put my hand and disturb them, but I know that would just burn my hand.

Anyways, the point is that brain is perhaps the most sophisticated thing of anything that has ever existed on this planet. When you are awake, you think, when you sleep you think(we call it dream). Sometimes dreams show you your greatest desires cloaked in the most beautiful veil possible. Of-course, shattered dreams are like walking on broken glass pieces with naked legs but in this infinitude of universe if there were some planet where a guy like me would have been living just the life I have dreamed often, I wonder what his dreams would look like. What would it be like, if I had got what all I wanted?

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life it is!

Sometimes, I find re-reading a novel a lot more amusing than the first time reading. This time I know all the tricks of the author. I know how the story is spun up, and eventually what will happen. The feeling is a kind of a deja vu only difference being that the events are not happening to me but to the projections of the novel in my mind. Sometimes I feel, if only I could talk to these projections and tell them when they are in despair, “Dont worry, everything will turn out to be just fine. Eventually it will all end”.

Life is like reading the novel for the first time. You never know what the author has planned. Sometimes you wish you could peek into the pages ahead to make yourself believe that everything is going to be alright. Fortunately, its not possible, for if it were, life wouldn’t have been so beautiful. And each novel has only limited number of pages. Also each chapter is allocated with a limited space in the book. So whatever it is, it will eventually end.

Its the bitter sweet coincidences that I like the most in my life. Especially how the things build up to make that coincidence happen. Its just a normal day of life following the normal course, but something unanticipated, most unexpected event goes wrong to change the course of the day, as if it happened just to make that one moment of coincidence possible. Life, its just too beautiful.

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The Thinking Cigarette

We used to be together silently for hours. Not a word used to be spoken. You used to come to me when you were sad, depressed. You would burn me down only for me to be reborn. And there was some solace in that silence for both of us. It used to make your heart feel lighter and it was the only conversation I used to have with anyone. There was something magical in the smoke to which you were addicted to. Maybe the burning sensation diverted you from your pains. I feel guilty but I used to long for you to come to me. You were the world to me.

But now I haven’t seen you for a while. You must have found someone to share your sorrows, someone who doesn’t just sit silently beside you but lends you some soothing words. I suppose I should be happy for you, but its so hard to feel that way. I hope someday you would show up feeling the need of having a silent conversation with me. I hope, though I am ashamed of doing so.