Sunday, December 30, 2007
Friday, December 28, 2007
Gharpe bol ke aaya kya....?
For all those non Hindi speaking minority in the minority of people reading my blogs, the title means- Did you inform at your house when you came out? This is a general statement made by irate motorists when something(someone) comes in their way. The general assumption- Anything that has come into their way would be to commit suicide. Let me go on now.
When I was a child I wanted to become an IAS officer, ah what a joke? Because, I also wanted to become a doctor, I also vaguely remember my dreams of flying an airplane. Reality dawned upon me, I am a blogger now. But how?
I remember standing at a junction of different career roads. There were pointers towards different roads, one showed IAS, the other pilot, doctor etc. But, there was a large chunk of crowd running towards a particularly bad road, pointing towards "ENGINEERING". Almost all of them are running towards it and I chose to be one among the crowd. I took the road. I am an engineer now. What a joke again.
Let me just help you understand the joke. I have been to a decent school, thanks to my father and I still reckon my schooling is the best part of my education, although I did not do too well in my board exams. I then went to a junior college, which is more of a hut than anything else and which emptied my dad's pockets to penury by pretending that they are preparing me for JEE. I fumbled in the war called JEE, stumbled and thanks to the then AP govt and JNTU, I ended up in one of the many Engineering colleges as a Mechanical Engineer. I love physics, and hence I loved my stream, but the pedagogy sucked. There was no practical perspective to anything and any such question in the class was always scorned at. All that the lecturers would do is parrot the text books which they consider to be bible and vomit everything on us. Four years of utter mediocrity with only challenge being passing the exams. And in four years I am an engineer who is not sure about what is so engineer about him.
Its placement time and I managed to clinch a job, not because of my Engineering skills but because of my communication skills, in an airport construction project. I worked there for one year and shifted for bigger challenges(the biggest joke). The expectations from my new company were manifold. I expected to work in:
When I was a child I wanted to become an IAS officer, ah what a joke? Because, I also wanted to become a doctor, I also vaguely remember my dreams of flying an airplane. Reality dawned upon me, I am a blogger now. But how?
I remember standing at a junction of different career roads. There were pointers towards different roads, one showed IAS, the other pilot, doctor etc. But, there was a large chunk of crowd running towards a particularly bad road, pointing towards "ENGINEERING". Almost all of them are running towards it and I chose to be one among the crowd. I took the road. I am an engineer now. What a joke again.
Let me just help you understand the joke. I have been to a decent school, thanks to my father and I still reckon my schooling is the best part of my education, although I did not do too well in my board exams. I then went to a junior college, which is more of a hut than anything else and which emptied my dad's pockets to penury by pretending that they are preparing me for JEE. I fumbled in the war called JEE, stumbled and thanks to the then AP govt and JNTU, I ended up in one of the many Engineering colleges as a Mechanical Engineer. I love physics, and hence I loved my stream, but the pedagogy sucked. There was no practical perspective to anything and any such question in the class was always scorned at. All that the lecturers would do is parrot the text books which they consider to be bible and vomit everything on us. Four years of utter mediocrity with only challenge being passing the exams. And in four years I am an engineer who is not sure about what is so engineer about him.
Its placement time and I managed to clinch a job, not because of my Engineering skills but because of my communication skills, in an airport construction project. I worked there for one year and shifted for bigger challenges(the biggest joke). The expectations from my new company were manifold. I expected to work in:
- Heat Transfer Dynamics
- Machine Dynamics
- Simulations in Material Science.
- Aerodynamics.
- CAD/CAE applications.
- Plant Layouts
- Robotics.
And many more. But what I had done and what I have been doing?
- Creating 3-d drawings from 2-d drawings
- Giving boundary conditions for a model created in CAE
- Sitting on Bench and cribbing for department change.
- Writing blogs and advertising them to my friends.
And when I got transferred, I do something that is never Mechanical and it has got nothing to do with coding. The work I do is so mind numbingly simple that that the ennui of doing it forces mistakes out of you. There is nothing creative and the only thing creative I do here is writing blogs.
And amidst all this, I hear a voice from my computer, it was loud and clear and it has an air of authenticity in it, it said "Gharpe bol ke aaya kya?". And now I keep asking my self, am I heading towards a suicide?
Monday, December 24, 2007
Love-are you sure?
In my previous article I wrote a rather raw or under cooked definition of love, which did not quite get down well with many; though, I still feel that they, in their bottom most layer of heart, are more than happy to agree with me. In fact what I have written is not out of experience but what the research speaks. What is research after all, seeking rhetoric for one's thought process? Whatsoever let me just try and confuse people on what they think as Love, is really love? Or is it just the regular business of Brain with its chemicals?
Before going any further, let me clarify (for fear of losing/not getting girl friends) that I am not against love( let me call it Eros raher than love) nor am I a psychopath nor a cynic. I am a techie guy who has got lots of time and a bit of brain (? Citation needed) to do some useless research and keep confusing myself and others around me with a rhetoric which often ends up proving that I am a person with inflated ego and one who would make fools of “ignorant people” because more often than not I end up putting down others’ argument, no matter what! But, I let go, as I said earlier, at the end of the day, there are more people who enjoy my company than who regret.
Averting any further digression from the topic let me have the luxury of asking you to think once again, what actually you meant by saying I love you to your partner? Well for your convenience (or might be due to the extreme inclination towards objective questions) I am giving you options:
1) I want to marry you.
2) I want you to sleep with me
3) I want to control you(or I want me to be controlled by you)
4) I want to increase my expenses (time, energy, money). (Not much of difference between the options but that’s how RCs are framed in CAT).
Now, most of you might have chosen an option and if you dint, then you are not sure about your love. And for all those who have chosen one of the above options, why you are not able to express yourselves with that option and why you rather chose to use the word I love you. Well, I bet, most of you cannot answer this question and most common answer is, “I tell it because I felt like”; but, if I ask, what that feeling is, I get an answer love; and again we get back to our basic question, what do you mean by love or I love you. So, this gets into a vicious cycle.
Yes, I do understand that it is difficult to define love, but if you were to go through the link which I have mentioned above, you will be able to find out that Biological models of love tend to see it as a mammalian drive, just like hunger or thirst. Psychology sees love as more of a social and cultural phenomenon. There are probably elements of truth in both views — certainly love is influenced by hormones (such as oxytocin) and pheromones, and how people think and behave in love is influenced by their conceptions of love.
Now, this sentence “Their conceptions of love” is a killer sentence. It is rather alluring and deceiving because it is allowing you to conceptualize love and it also means that there is no solid definition for love and this encourages each person to think what ever his brain's pleasure centers are asking him/her to do as love. For example, research proved that when you meet a person whom you think you like, there are high levels of Oxytocin that are released in blood along with other chemicals which are similar to the ones released durin drug abuse. So, say for example, that person has started talking to a girl late nights and if he continues doing this for a considerable period, the chances are that this would turn into an addiction. The same holds good for other romantic activities like going out for dinner, watching movies, holding hands and meeting (any activity that makes you meet) all these activities stimulate brain's pleasure centers, and hence one gets addicted to all these activities. It is fun, rather heaven as one female commented about love in my last article, (apparently she missed out the fact that heaven is some thing illusionary and never exists), when one is able to do all these things and hell(which again is illusionary) when one cannot get the pleasure he used to get.
What I want to conclude here is that, Love- as most people think what they are in is nothing but brain's chemicals at work. I am not saying that Love does not exists but as far as I know 95% of the couples bluff themsleves by thinking that they are in Love. While, in reality, what they actually going through is a natural phenomenon which is as natural as hunger and thirst. What I percieve as love will be discussed in my next article.
Before going any further, let me clarify (for fear of losing/not getting girl friends) that I am not against love( let me call it Eros raher than love) nor am I a psychopath nor a cynic. I am a techie guy who has got lots of time and a bit of brain (? Citation needed) to do some useless research and keep confusing myself and others around me with a rhetoric which often ends up proving that I am a person with inflated ego and one who would make fools of “ignorant people” because more often than not I end up putting down others’ argument, no matter what! But, I let go, as I said earlier, at the end of the day, there are more people who enjoy my company than who regret.
Averting any further digression from the topic let me have the luxury of asking you to think once again, what actually you meant by saying I love you to your partner? Well for your convenience (or might be due to the extreme inclination towards objective questions) I am giving you options:
1) I want to marry you.
2) I want you to sleep with me
3) I want to control you(or I want me to be controlled by you)
4) I want to increase my expenses (time, energy, money). (Not much of difference between the options but that’s how RCs are framed in CAT).
Now, most of you might have chosen an option and if you dint, then you are not sure about your love. And for all those who have chosen one of the above options, why you are not able to express yourselves with that option and why you rather chose to use the word I love you. Well, I bet, most of you cannot answer this question and most common answer is, “I tell it because I felt like”; but, if I ask, what that feeling is, I get an answer love; and again we get back to our basic question, what do you mean by love or I love you. So, this gets into a vicious cycle.
Yes, I do understand that it is difficult to define love, but if you were to go through the link which I have mentioned above, you will be able to find out that Biological models of love tend to see it as a mammalian drive, just like hunger or thirst. Psychology sees love as more of a social and cultural phenomenon. There are probably elements of truth in both views — certainly love is influenced by hormones (such as oxytocin) and pheromones, and how people think and behave in love is influenced by their conceptions of love.
Now, this sentence “Their conceptions of love” is a killer sentence. It is rather alluring and deceiving because it is allowing you to conceptualize love and it also means that there is no solid definition for love and this encourages each person to think what ever his brain's pleasure centers are asking him/her to do as love. For example, research proved that when you meet a person whom you think you like, there are high levels of Oxytocin that are released in blood along with other chemicals which are similar to the ones released durin drug abuse. So, say for example, that person has started talking to a girl late nights and if he continues doing this for a considerable period, the chances are that this would turn into an addiction. The same holds good for other romantic activities like going out for dinner, watching movies, holding hands and meeting (any activity that makes you meet) all these activities stimulate brain's pleasure centers, and hence one gets addicted to all these activities. It is fun, rather heaven as one female commented about love in my last article, (apparently she missed out the fact that heaven is some thing illusionary and never exists), when one is able to do all these things and hell(which again is illusionary) when one cannot get the pleasure he used to get.
What I want to conclude here is that, Love- as most people think what they are in is nothing but brain's chemicals at work. I am not saying that Love does not exists but as far as I know 95% of the couples bluff themsleves by thinking that they are in Love. While, in reality, what they actually going through is a natural phenomenon which is as natural as hunger and thirst. What I percieve as love will be discussed in my next article.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Made in Heaven.......
It was 5:45 in the morning, a chilly December morning. He woke up with a jerk. No it was not due to an alarm, not a physical one at least. As a matter of fact he no more needs an alarm to wake up; his body has been tuned to wake up at a particular time and no matter what he wakes up mechanically at that time.
He grabbed the novel he was reading and got into the loo, he got ready slipped into his attire planned for today and headed towards the mirror. He checked his eyes they were ok, he then checked his biceps not much of flesh there and then he checked his chest, not much of a difference there either, he wished he had a good body, but smiled looking at his small cute tummy. He fastened his waist belt and got into his shoes and started running towards the bus stop.
He usually reaches the bus stop 5 minutes early and waits there for 15 minutes for the bus to come; today as usual he spent the 15 minutes trying to lock his eyes with a girl he likes. The bus has arrived and he barged in and sat in his favorite 2 seater and with a weird inquisitive feeling he waited to see who sits beside him, but before someone could the bus started.
He pulled out the novel he was reading and managed a few pages before he could doze off. He woke up with a jolt. He thought something fell on him, he immediately looked up, there was nothing but the roof of the bus, but why did he think that a coconut fell on him? It hardly took a few seconds for him to realize that there was a person sitting beside him and he hit the persons shoulder and in a few more seconds he also realized that he knew the person. He almost shouted “Hello dude!!!!!”, the guy replied, blabbered something and finally asked the question, the question which he himself has been averting since long, the question which might disturb the peace of even most content soul, the question- “how is life??”. He mechanically told LIFE IS GOOD.
He then started staring at the orange skies of the morning, slowly closed his eyes and then the dramatical cycle wheel started rotating backwards, his thoughts then started traveling back in time, and he was in flash back. The only reason was to find out whether life is good.
The series of events that happened to him for last one year started unfolding. He luckily survived a fatal accident and saved his mobile from the people who tried to save him. He recovered, but lost his mobile a very costly one when it slipped out of his pockets. He smiled and told himself that life is good, because he had a job and he likes the place because all his loved ones live in the city. Within no time his PM calls him and says, you need to go to another city, 1200 kms away from here, business needs you know? After all there are lots of onsite opportunities and growth is faster. He left the city, much to the dismay of his loved ones. After all, Life is good.
Everything increased, his expenses, the distance from his loved ones, the work load, everything increased but his salary. He smiled and said life is good. And one fine day, his PM calls him and says that he was going onsite. He applied for WP and booked his tickets and over the weekend, he has done shopping to the limit his credit cards could allow him to. And then he realizes that the WP got delayed and hence the journey, he cancels the tickets, but finally he flies. He smiled and said Life is good.
Within 2 weeks, he comes to know that he has to fly back to India due to unavoidable circumstances; he obliges flies back along with his three friends. He lands in India, exits the airport only to find out that there are only 3 taxis waiting there. He guessed the missing one shall be his and is true. Just as he tries to get into his friends taxi, his mobile tries to escape the gravity, flies off and suddenly realizes that it cannot esacape and falls back on the gravel with a thud. Never did he know that his mobile has so many parts in it. He collected all of them and spent the rest of the journey assembling the mobile and at the end of the journey he realizes that his keypad was malfunctioning. He smiles and says life is good.
He starts of on his bike to go to the service center and then he realizes that his bike seized as he did not service it for long. He has to leave his bike and mobile in their respective service centers and go back home. And after a few days he does a balance sheet, the total expenses of bike, mobile and credit card bills for onsite travel has well exceeded the savings from his onsite trip. He smiled and said life is good.
Just as he was thinking all these, he started jerking vigorously, he was wondering why, because he was not epileptic. But then he realized that he was approaching office and the bus was going through the wonderful road that leads to the office. Just as his musings are coming back to the present, his phone rang, it was his girl friend, she called and said “hey, I like someone else, thank you very much for everything, sorry, ah” he hung up and smiled. Just as he got down the bus, his phone rung again, he hoped it was his girl friend and hoped that she called up to say that she was joking. But he should be too lucky for that. It was his PM, he reminded him that today is the last day to close the appraisal.
He headed towards the cyber café and opened his appraisal, only then did he realize that there are worse things than a girl friend ditching you. He smiles and writes the mandatory comments and closes his appraisal and heads towards the lift. Just as he reached the lift, the lift car’s doors were closed and it left. He smiled and told himself that lifts have no option but to come back and pressed the call button. Just as he waited for the lift car, there was thud, something landed on his head. He reached for it, it was a bag, after close examination he found that it was a bag of shit and after closer examination he found a small tag- MADE IN HEAVEN. Oops, he realized that heavens dropt shit on him again, this was not the first time and every time it happened he hoped it was the last, he smiled and said life is good as he headed towards the staircase as the lift got shut down.
He grabbed the novel he was reading and got into the loo, he got ready slipped into his attire planned for today and headed towards the mirror. He checked his eyes they were ok, he then checked his biceps not much of flesh there and then he checked his chest, not much of a difference there either, he wished he had a good body, but smiled looking at his small cute tummy. He fastened his waist belt and got into his shoes and started running towards the bus stop.
He usually reaches the bus stop 5 minutes early and waits there for 15 minutes for the bus to come; today as usual he spent the 15 minutes trying to lock his eyes with a girl he likes. The bus has arrived and he barged in and sat in his favorite 2 seater and with a weird inquisitive feeling he waited to see who sits beside him, but before someone could the bus started.
He pulled out the novel he was reading and managed a few pages before he could doze off. He woke up with a jolt. He thought something fell on him, he immediately looked up, there was nothing but the roof of the bus, but why did he think that a coconut fell on him? It hardly took a few seconds for him to realize that there was a person sitting beside him and he hit the persons shoulder and in a few more seconds he also realized that he knew the person. He almost shouted “Hello dude!!!!!”, the guy replied, blabbered something and finally asked the question, the question which he himself has been averting since long, the question which might disturb the peace of even most content soul, the question- “how is life??”. He mechanically told LIFE IS GOOD.
He then started staring at the orange skies of the morning, slowly closed his eyes and then the dramatical cycle wheel started rotating backwards, his thoughts then started traveling back in time, and he was in flash back. The only reason was to find out whether life is good.
The series of events that happened to him for last one year started unfolding. He luckily survived a fatal accident and saved his mobile from the people who tried to save him. He recovered, but lost his mobile a very costly one when it slipped out of his pockets. He smiled and told himself that life is good, because he had a job and he likes the place because all his loved ones live in the city. Within no time his PM calls him and says, you need to go to another city, 1200 kms away from here, business needs you know? After all there are lots of onsite opportunities and growth is faster. He left the city, much to the dismay of his loved ones. After all, Life is good.
Everything increased, his expenses, the distance from his loved ones, the work load, everything increased but his salary. He smiled and said life is good. And one fine day, his PM calls him and says that he was going onsite. He applied for WP and booked his tickets and over the weekend, he has done shopping to the limit his credit cards could allow him to. And then he realizes that the WP got delayed and hence the journey, he cancels the tickets, but finally he flies. He smiled and said Life is good.
Within 2 weeks, he comes to know that he has to fly back to India due to unavoidable circumstances; he obliges flies back along with his three friends. He lands in India, exits the airport only to find out that there are only 3 taxis waiting there. He guessed the missing one shall be his and is true. Just as he tries to get into his friends taxi, his mobile tries to escape the gravity, flies off and suddenly realizes that it cannot esacape and falls back on the gravel with a thud. Never did he know that his mobile has so many parts in it. He collected all of them and spent the rest of the journey assembling the mobile and at the end of the journey he realizes that his keypad was malfunctioning. He smiles and says life is good.
He starts of on his bike to go to the service center and then he realizes that his bike seized as he did not service it for long. He has to leave his bike and mobile in their respective service centers and go back home. And after a few days he does a balance sheet, the total expenses of bike, mobile and credit card bills for onsite travel has well exceeded the savings from his onsite trip. He smiled and said life is good.
Just as he was thinking all these, he started jerking vigorously, he was wondering why, because he was not epileptic. But then he realized that he was approaching office and the bus was going through the wonderful road that leads to the office. Just as his musings are coming back to the present, his phone rang, it was his girl friend, she called and said “hey, I like someone else, thank you very much for everything, sorry, ah” he hung up and smiled. Just as he got down the bus, his phone rung again, he hoped it was his girl friend and hoped that she called up to say that she was joking. But he should be too lucky for that. It was his PM, he reminded him that today is the last day to close the appraisal.
He headed towards the cyber café and opened his appraisal, only then did he realize that there are worse things than a girl friend ditching you. He smiles and writes the mandatory comments and closes his appraisal and heads towards the lift. Just as he reached the lift, the lift car’s doors were closed and it left. He smiled and told himself that lifts have no option but to come back and pressed the call button. Just as he waited for the lift car, there was thud, something landed on his head. He reached for it, it was a bag, after close examination he found that it was a bag of shit and after closer examination he found a small tag- MADE IN HEAVEN. Oops, he realized that heavens dropt shit on him again, this was not the first time and every time it happened he hoped it was the last, he smiled and said life is good as he headed towards the staircase as the lift got shut down.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Love - A beautiful lie.
Please note that the love mentioned in this blog is the love between a male and female.
If there is one thing that is more rotten than any other thing in this world, one thing which hits a person where it hurts the most and reduces him to an absolute idiot, it is Love. Hopeless love, no matter success or failure, would change the way you look at things and stirs up hitherto placid soul into a state of utter chaos.
When you are in love, or for that matter when you were in it and had to get out of it, the temperament which otherwise helped you to take any problem with a philosophical alright would suddenly disappear and is replaced by frustration and irritates you acutely. And, amidst all this you need to pamper your girl if you are in terms with her or frown at her, otherwise. So, no matter what, love sucks the most of you- money, time, brain, parents, friends, sense and sensibility.
In this world of blighters, love is nothing but the name of the way testosterone takes up to the destination it is destined to. There might be people, who with al their might, tend to disagree with me and say that love is pure and all that crap, its all trash, all this purity of love between a male and female is just a sugar coating for bitter truth, on basis of which the world is designed. Love is nothing but the fuel to the world’s most basic motion – Reciprocatory.
Thins don’t end here, love has contributed a lot to the commercial world; the first and foremost thing being the cell phone. If you know a person whose telephone bills increased by 900% and you hardly remember when he called you last time, then a safe assumption is that he is looking a girl. And who is gaining? The service provider. You don’t need to be explained how much the discos, pubs, restaurants, malls, shopping complexes last but not the least the film industry depend on love. They want you to love and seriously so.
I being ever a man of plain speech and reckless plunger in to delicate subjects would conclude that Love is nothing but a beautiful lie. The means for the love might be different, but the ends are same. All roads lead to Rome, all love leads to?
(The statement has been left incomplete as an exercise to the reader)
If there is one thing that is more rotten than any other thing in this world, one thing which hits a person where it hurts the most and reduces him to an absolute idiot, it is Love. Hopeless love, no matter success or failure, would change the way you look at things and stirs up hitherto placid soul into a state of utter chaos.
When you are in love, or for that matter when you were in it and had to get out of it, the temperament which otherwise helped you to take any problem with a philosophical alright would suddenly disappear and is replaced by frustration and irritates you acutely. And, amidst all this you need to pamper your girl if you are in terms with her or frown at her, otherwise. So, no matter what, love sucks the most of you- money, time, brain, parents, friends, sense and sensibility.
In this world of blighters, love is nothing but the name of the way testosterone takes up to the destination it is destined to. There might be people, who with al their might, tend to disagree with me and say that love is pure and all that crap, its all trash, all this purity of love between a male and female is just a sugar coating for bitter truth, on basis of which the world is designed. Love is nothing but the fuel to the world’s most basic motion – Reciprocatory.
Thins don’t end here, love has contributed a lot to the commercial world; the first and foremost thing being the cell phone. If you know a person whose telephone bills increased by 900% and you hardly remember when he called you last time, then a safe assumption is that he is looking a girl. And who is gaining? The service provider. You don’t need to be explained how much the discos, pubs, restaurants, malls, shopping complexes last but not the least the film industry depend on love. They want you to love and seriously so.
I being ever a man of plain speech and reckless plunger in to delicate subjects would conclude that Love is nothing but a beautiful lie. The means for the love might be different, but the ends are same. All roads lead to Rome, all love leads to?
(The statement has been left incomplete as an exercise to the reader)
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