Friendship

"A friend may well be reckoned a masterpiece of nature"

Alan(smiling): You constantly surprise me!
Denny: Keep the love fresh...lets go fishing
Alan: Lets go fishing..

Here's to Denny and Alan!

Music: In my Life (Beatles)

'Euro'lgic

Sometimes in the college life, within all the Zsa Zsas’ and no Zsu…there is nothing like a free lunch, you know someone calling and saying “Did you have your lunch?” and quick as it should comes “No!” and you might readily agree for a lunch date! Now very honestly I may be contradicting my post of yesterday. But I have more in mind than just that…

Free lunch is great, but a free lunch on a free eurotrip is grand. What makes it grander then is that you are a student and you are called, am sorry..invited for an internship in any university per se, and you are there all by yourself. I would recommend to everyone who studies in a prestigious institute like IITs’ to try your level best to go out. One of my friends had talked me into it actually when I was so tired of applying to universities outside and not getting replies..”It can be one story of your life which you can tell to your grandchildren and they will enjoy! And you will be proud about yourself then” I definitely made me laugh then and it definitely makes me smile now!

I had my internship in Sweden at the end of my third year. I was excited and scared then. At first the feeling never sunk in that am leaving my country but when the plane took off, I became real. I remember being at the Frankfurt airport all by myself, trapping all I could in my camera, waiting to board another flight. I also remember the dizziness..it was my longest flight…8 hrs!! I was in the land of whites. Oh that reminds me, it was my first trip abroad. And it was just the first in “it was a first!” category.

I had my first cruise trip, first subway ride, first ride in a 40-seater jet, first ride in a 400-seater plane, first time when I saw the sunrising before 3 am and setting at 11 pm, a not so royal trip to a grand casino. food..Indian restaurants which were maintained by bangladesis, three different types of flora change in a month and a half, veg food which includes sea-food…on the other hand sometimes doesn’t include milk products as well. Currency….I can never forget the initial days when I always converted the price of everything in rupees, the obvious parameter for me to judge the expenses. Luncheon with a lot of intellectual souls was another thing I completely relished then, I was too uninformed to understand many research talks then…or it sometimes is that you think you are still young for all this so not knowing and not understanding comes in handy.

I don’t think I had the very usual trip like all the other students…I dint go to paris, rome, Venice…I kept all that in store for some other special trip! I did attend a conference in Lyon instead…I went to see the best cities of Sweden, not so popular take for a trip in Europe…and I loved it.

When me and my friend cooked by ourselves, I had to capture an image of it....Well however sad it looks It was a first and my friend was more responsible in spoiling it than me :)

Definitely the thought of food being my responsibility scares me still..

I did make a lot of friends, had a lot of adventures and it all seems shadowed now...

Sweet Memories :)

mood: Nostalgic

Now will soon be then…

Look, See, watch ahead of time
Make a preposterous attempt to turn pages back

It all green now, available and hearty
Switching between red and orange is in store

Laugh out loud, cry while you can
Your demeanour may be on watch soon

Write long mails and longer answers
You might be answering calls all the way

Don yourself as you like
Don’t wait for the dress code to be announced

Work in the shabby, cut, torn, jeans now
Formal attire will be necessary

Nestle yourself
Emplacement will have its own time

Learn before you are called experienced
And so, don’t think before you talk now

Don’t impede now
Future has saved the obstacles for you

Quaint is what you call life now
Stranger things can happen before and after noon

Enjoy now, so that you can talk about this
Keep the belabour late in the agenda

Drink to the past, Merry for the future!!

Mood: Thinking Music: RHCP

No Free Lunches

College life is one place where we all apparently learn time management. It goes like this, you have lot of work and you know about it, you know there is a deadline but then there is still time so you have movies to watch, places to go, the usual cac-sessions to catch up on and many many more things. Eventually the deadline is soon enough and all this is has to be put aside just to let you switch back soon. In those long workdays, you sleep very less, sleep at odd times watch ample number of 20 min series, eat your meals pretty quick, skip meals are the common to-dos and of course keep thinking about finishing the task in hand so that you can go to some place nice with some people nice. Since you really cant work all dressed up so you pick your shabby set of clothes and sometimes cant wait to have enough time for a long shower and then change to something dressy enough.

Well its comprehensible enough now that am having a deadline for THE final thesis, the second last of the last academic thing@IITB, my last submission, my final nightouts for ‘earning’ my degree fair and square. So anyway, caught up in one such afternoon where I slept at 10 a.m. after a heavy breaker to get up at 12 noon to work with my full potential…of course couldn’t! Slept till it was after lunch time and had a thought (I have sleep thoughts which make me get up sometimes or I remember them later) “It is Sunday! And it is the last Sunday when my mess would serve the usual chole, poori gulabjamun lunch…popularly known as the “Sunday Lunch” to all of us..would be served !” This was the thought that did wake me up and I went straight to the mess, had two very dry and oily pooris with chola and the gulabjamun and even though I wasn’t hungry, it was an easy and tasty intake!

It was very strange. Mess food is hardly a delight after eating 5 years continuously in that…even though we are paying for it…we always considered it free lunches that we can always miss to eat out, eat some grub or skip it altogether for it not being good! And here I was running to the mess for the same lunch I have had soo many times over that I should be bored. I remember once being very hungry after a long long sleep and eating 9 pooris on the Sunday. I have actually started liking certain things served in meals in the mess…of course I had got this sense early enough that I cant like food in a mess meant for all every single time, but appreciation has not been my virtue for the mess bit of my hostel.

I am soon going to enter the working class, where my meals will be my responsibility. Of course I will have my own kitchen, no time boundations, no fixed menu and may be ‘no cribbing necessary’!! After the last usual Alu paratha dinner...am wondering

Will it be like the Free Lunches?!

Mood: Interesting
Music: feet-tapping

The 'V' word

It is absolutely astounding how certain alphabets (F,V) used by themselves ring a bell, but that’s certainly not what am writing about today. I have story about a V I want to put across.

Have you heard about Viruses? Of course you have! Have you had to face one? Of course you had to! Have you been teased for long by one? Mostly of course you have been! Have you been able to get rid of them? Many times yes and Many times no with a whole new installation process mostly lining up in between your busy dates with you PC…and the sore bugging procedure!! And ya, their weird names: Trojan Horse, Mytob32 to mention a few!

Well I don’t nurture my PC enough, nor do I take a lot of care of it! I don’t keep firewalls, some special antivirus and a lot more PnCs of these or more. I keep one antivirus, the popular one and that’s pretty much about the care I think I take of my very Personal Computer. And hence I and viruses have a mutual understanding of meeting up once atleast each sem. If they don’t come by themselves, I am supposed to open something wrong, download something wrong ;) or get them here somehow! And have to go through the installation wizard !

This time around I have a virus which I guess was created by the antivirus itself somehow. Trust my word, I dint download anything, dint use an erroneous pen drive, dint open some arbit link..Nothing! But I love this one and have decided to pamper it. If anything, it has made my comp faster than anything…I don’t have task manager anymore {apparently its deleted) and if all the processes get stuck I should take a walk in the corridor and tada! the job is done by itself. I dont have paint and Windows media Player…who needs them anyway. Paint is for kids and we have better media players than the one named so. If situation gets worse, restart the computer and trust me the reboot speed is like the speed of light. In seconds am back to the normal opening soo many processes at one time. I have no idea of the name of this one, and you know what I don’t want to. I don’t want to hear any dodgy things about it from people.

I will christen it myself, something good sometime later!

Mood: Bored

Simply Fantasizing!

To make a movie, you need something good, something bad and something ugly. I can hardly recall none made out of all good. Let’s keep the conversation based movies aside, they have a different genre. Most that impress us have a “pursuit of happyness” so to say within them. We need to see the conditions that are worthwhile to be daunted for. Rise, success, strength and more keywords like this keeps the show going on. It is welcomed if it is ahead of ordinary.

It aint a bad thing to celebrate a simple life. But fantasy has its own fascination. Fantasy movies can be considered the epitome of the celluloid world. A world recreated from within our surroundings as we know them. A simple lad simply unaware like us is chosen to complete a task. An old man with immense knowledge to tell us whats going on. An inexplicable force, which has brought all the “good” people together. Men at eighties look like in their late twenties. Weapons can create mystical forces of nature. The wars depicting canny reckless bravery. You want all this together, you have to look for a fantasy world. A ghastly power ended some billions of years ago is being reincarnated and you have to save the world as we know it. There are some dark secrets hidden and with each passing moment they give an adrenaline rush to get the whole untwined. And to top it all, you have everything named and named well different. The names mean something big, trees can walk and many many extraordinary things. Its imagination, innovation, it’s a great world of fantasy. Though its only a sham world, they are beautifully picturised and directed and hence popular.

In the words of Samwise the brave:
“Its like in the great stories. The ones that really mattered, full of darkness and danger they were and sometimes, you dint want to know the end…because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was…when so much bad had happened. But in the end its only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come and when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you…that meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why! Folks uin those stories have lots of chances of turning back but they dint. They kept going…because they were holding on to something”

Probably if we are a part of it, we will understand and know…that there is some good in this world worth fighting for!

Lets keep fantasizing till then…

Goodfellas: Wise guys!

Imagine about your profession being a set of perilous crimes...airport robbing, murdering, gambling..and making money, I repeat making money out of all of it and throw it away faster than you can would and should. For general people, guns are scary. But when you hold them, they are a turn on. When you are bored enough with all this you can switch to something new..D***-Dealing. See its a business and you can always do more of it because you will want to do more of it. You are broke, rob some more You are dangerous and somehow that makes you a respectable person in your community. You can do things none of them can. Your initial perks are you never have to wait for nething, no waiting queues, you get the freshest bread, your driveway is always left empty and those no-ones carry your grocery for you because ,lets face it, you are the esteemed one. Prove yourself and don’t be a rat, everything is a phone call away, Free cars, dozen apartments to hide, Jewelry in paper bags in kitchen, betting 20-30 grand over a weekend and blow it off asap . Since you can rob, I am sorry make any amount of money and since you are handful so you keep everyone…cops lawyers judges paid good. Everything is for the taking.

“We always called each other ‘goodfellas’. Like you say to somebody..You’ll like this guy. He is a good-fella. He’s one of us. You understand? We were goodfellas. Wise guys”

“
‘Police!Freeze! Don’t you move you MotherF*****! I’ll blow your brains out. Shut the car off slowly’

‘For a second I thought I was dead. But when I heard all the noise I knew they were cops. Only cops talk that way. If they’d been wiseguys, I wouldn’t have heard a thing. I would have been dead’
“

“
‘..And now its all over. That’s the hardest part Today everything is different. There is no action. I got to wait around like everyone else, cant even get decent food. I am an average nobody. Got to live the rest of my life like a schnook’
“

As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a gangster." -- Henry Hill, Brooklyn, N.Y. 1955

Worth a watch..GOODFELLAS! film directed by Martin Scorsese, based on the book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pilegg.

Background noise: Goodfellas

Feckless

A busy page flapped
A busy day ahead
Its good sometimes to have no time
Buzzes keep blinking...and you are perilously occupied!

I have a deadline and a task to finish
Been innovative before...
I have to adopt the lockstep patterns again
In the fitful way the jobs are finished
eventually I get adapted to the system!

Engineer am going to be called
but its the tom-toms of Science that are bugging me now
I dont expect you to understand this
Just dont befuddle yourself

Its the story of my life
Just the present actually
The indelible things seem effaced
I am ludicrous sometimes
Plain quaint some other times

I wanted to write so I wrote
Tired enough to think some more
Its abstract, ooh thats what my thoughts are called
Its ME and thats all...

Mood: Arbit

Forever High on Floyd

It would have been wonderful to be of my present age in the 1970s’. With the best bands around and music as we hear them now would have been bands emerging and facing success and popularity. Floyd, gives a song to be heard on all occasions of your life…First you are amazed by the music and then Lyrics when you feel you have rediscovered a song…

I can, and never should dare, put Floyd in words…if you know them you will know why…So for today lets just say

“Happy Mother’s Day”

Mother, do you think they'll drop the bomb?
Mother, do you think they'll like this song?
Mother, do you think they'll try to break my balls?
Mother, should I build the wall?
Mother, should I run for President?
Mother, should I trust the government?
Mother, will they put me in the firing line?
Is it just a waste of time?

Hush now baby, baby, don't you cry
Momma's gonna make all of your nightmares come true
Momma's gonna put all of her fears into you
Momma's gonna keep you right here under her wing
She won't let you fly, but she might let you sing
Momma's will keep Baby cozy and warm
Oooo Babe
Oooo Babe
Ooo Babe, of course Momma's gonna help build the wall

Mother, do you think she's good enough
For me?
Mother, do you think she's dangerous
To me?
Mother will she tear your little boy apart?
Mother, will she break my heart?

Hush now baby, baby, don't you cry
Momma's gonna check out all your girlfriends for you
Momma won't let anyone dirty get through
Momma's gonna wait up until you get in
Momma will always find out where you've been
Momma's gonna keep Baby healthy and clean
Oooo Babe
Oooo Babe
Ooo Babe, you'll always be Baby to me

Mother, did it need to be so high?

Music: Floyd

See-Saw

Often in interviews one is asked..where do you want to be x years down the line?
I have an answer to this “To be on the other side of the table”. I believe its my delusion about this answer being inappropriate as compared to the traditional ones that I dint say this in my few interviews till now.

But I always have had a thing about being on the other side….sometimes because it will be more fun, sometimes more exciting, sometimes lot more relaxing than where I am. We may call it basic human psychology or at this point of time in my life…I will say this gives me drive enough to work hard and well, well!

And very much on the contrary, I sometimes need to hear bad music to appreciate good ones, see bad plays to relish the better ones and see or hear abt the other colleges to feel lucky to be in the best. May I say sometimes we just might need to be on the other side to realize the flipsyde!

All of us must have been on a see-saw at some point of time in our life. When on it I loved where I was and also wanted to be on the other side . It was fun to give that push from the toes to go up and it was exhilarating to be up and feel light. With its own charm the activity continues in perfect harmony and imbalance, let alone a little belabour here and there!!

I just wonder if all we need to be in harmony is imbalance few things by our own choices?

Mood: Sleepy again :)

Space Time and More...

“The time is gone, the song is over, thought Id something more to say”

Breaking the space time continuum is one of the biggest dreams of scientists and being conducive in the process should be a dream of many others. Going for a trip in space is now being made possible by virgin airlines but traveling in our own world back and forth will enhance the profligacy of travel or may I say time travel. If I travel back, the vestiges today will be realities and if I travel future the dreams will be realities. Funnily enough, I think what I am trying to say is it will be more real to visit the past and future than the present itself J Lets face it and be real anyway…lets just limit ourselves to this present.

Last days of college and you see people leaving and going to new places. I well observed break in the space time continuum…and this can do amazing things to you. Final goodbyes come with a lot of pleasing sorrys and thank yous!! You tend to forget all past grievances and duels, stop being cynical for a brief time which according to you is as good as not moving or moving soo fast that you rather spend it well than think about it. Or you might be subtle enough and display gestures like wishing luck or birthdays to once yours and then somewhere somehow not soo truly yours “friends”

I, on the other hand, am having very unusual last few days…am meeting new people and good ones as a matter of fact…may be I cant use the friends tag with them fondly now but I am of the belief that if I will, atleast I wont have to quote unquote them. For me time is moving really fast and soon I am going to enter a cult where the baffling thought will be the “Time value of Money’. With a deeper understanding of these words I might be able to write something more about it but as of now, the succinct of my near future will be…

"Spaceless Mumbai…No Time in hand…and a lot of pocket-Money"

Mood: Sleepy...i guess!!

Music: Time (floyd)

Be Prepared

Prepare to leave this place
Prepare to start again
Prepare to see a new beginning
Prepare yourself for an end
Prepare to look for a fresh match
But just in case…
Am I prepared for the mismatch?

Prepare to take the memories now
Prepare to make new ones
Prepare to pack the bags
Prepare for the worst and make the best out of it
Prepare to leave the door open forever
But just in case…
Can I close it one more time!

Should I flaunt the fear..
Or should I fawn it?

Prepare to leave the past behind
Or am I just forfeiting it…
Prepare for the legal escapade
Or am I breaking some rules…
Prepare to be curious all over again
Or will I be prying?!

Prepare to finish for THE start
Prepare to lay down my cards in the world…
Prepare to be in delirium
Or is it just an uncontrolled nothing!!

Am I preparing or am I all set?

Mood: that of a loner
Music: chirping of birds