The Destiny of an Innocence

She is growing up. Looks quite old now. Totally human. Unlike six months ago when her movements were restricted to blinking and random, clumsy hand- and feet-throwing and crying. Now she can crawl, smile, giggle, play, throw tantrums, all of which make her so cute and lively and bouncy and innocent and loveable.

However, as I clicked a few photographs of her yesterday, copied them on to my computer, and revisited them (like the one here), I felt apprehended. For the first time has a child scared me with her photo, and such a pretty child at that. She looks very human now. Very soon, she would be able to understand language, speak, and then think and understand and feel. And then emotions would start cropping up. Doom! There you go!

She would have option to choose. She will start discriminating between people. She would begin loving, caring, and would demand more of the same from others. She would start 'wanting'. She would expect from people. She'd feel bad. She'd feel good. She'd start enoying material things. She would begin a lot of things we do, and...

I am not exaggerating at all when I say I felt a shudder down my spine when I saw her photographs. Why do we have to have feelings? Can this child not be spared from the evils of the world and her innocence be preserved in its original form?

Sometimes

Sometimes you think you are smart. You have wrong notions about yourself, and there is no one to correct you. You live your entire life with those wrong notions and die with them.

Sometimes you think you are lonely. You know you are, and you desperately try to get rid of either the loneliness or at least the thought. You find someone and the loneliness evaporates. Or you find some engagement and the thought vanishes. But sooner or later, that someone goes away. Or they find some engagement. Or your engagement finishes off. You are back to being lonely again.

Sometimes you go to bed early. You generally do not. Often you don't even try. Keep up and waste time. You vow everyday you'll sleep before midnight or do something worthwhile, but you somehow never manage that.

Sometimes you try not to think. Generally you keep pondering and meditating and musing and reflecting and mulling over and ruminating and contemplating. Often you don't even try not to think. Your thoughts keep fluttering randomly. Keep disturbing you. You daydream or get depressed or plan or fret.

Sometimes you love someone. You know they do not, but you do. Unrequited is the word. But that knowledge doesn't stop you from loving them even if you know there is no future.

Sometimes someone does that to you. You reciprocate back. But you still do not hold your feelings back for the old one.

Sometimes you watch movies. You generally do not. But you always want to. And sometimes you find company. And you watch them. Then they go to sleep. You stay up. Chat with a close pal. Start thinking. And then you compose this "off the split-ends of your long hair" post.

RoR

Now all of my geeky readers, please do not get salivating. RoR doesn’t mean Ruby on Rails here. AOE enthusiasts also hold on, this is no Rise of Rome either. This is a term I coined on the lines of FoF (Fund of Funds), an investment fund that uses the strategy of holding over other funds rather than investing directly in shares, bonds or other securities, and stands for Review of Reviews.

The motivation behind writing an RoR comes from three most prolific bloggers on my Google Reader coming up with their versions of reviews of a common object—what else could it be other than the most talked about movie these days—Saawariya. And interestingly enough, they published their reviews of the 9^th Nov-released-flick on the same date, the 15^th of Nov, when the Recent blogposts I read widget on my blog looked too replete with Saawariya and I had to increase the number of items it displays by 50%.

I generally prefer reviews of non-professional critics rather than the likes of Taran Adarsh and Nikhat Kazmi; you can relate to views of people you know than to those of people who are paid to review, even if you know them only by regularly reading their frequent blogposts. The professionals are always biased anyways.

The review I liked the most was Washington based Great Bong’s, a disgruntled movie fanatic on the prowl for mind bending experiences, who, in his usual wit and humor, and sentences as long as half a page, puts Saawariya as the worst of the Sanjay Leela Bhansali lot: “a big plastic bag of hot air where dreamy sets, hued lighting and forgettable music is used to divert attention from the fact that there is absolutely nothing in this venture”. He mocks SLB on his belief about his direction and his interviews and his “merger of raga-based melodies with a Brodway style play”, calls Ranbir a “little tinker-bell of a man”, innocent and poor, and describes Sonal as demure and virginal and giving us more than a few glimpses of her back, “devoid of abundant and luxuriant fur”, unlike her dad Anil Kapoor’s. Salman Khan looks confused—he took off his top, but Ranbir went one step ahead and took off his bottom. Great Bong doesn’t even spare Rani: “Rani Mukherjee’s golden-hearted ‘lady of commerce’ performance completes a hat-trick of prostitute acts (which film historians refer to as her ‘blue period’)”.

A Bangalorean blogger, LongBlackVeil, deeply interested in deeply interesting things, especially nonsense, did not regret watching the movie. She finds the aesthetics stunning, likes the black-blue-green ambience, and loves the music. Although she likes Ranbir’s hairless chest and Neetu Singh smile, she doesn’t like his and Sonam’s characters, and the lack of chemistry between the two. She does like Rani’s role, but expresses afsos over SLB’s weak screenplay, mediocre dialogue and absolutely minimal character development. But she likes the movie as a whole anyways and thinks “it’s just a victim of those horrible old beasts: Great Expectations, and What Could Have Been”.

Cuckoo from Bombay terms the movie as an outright flop. She did not see any trailers, didn’t read about it anywhere, and did not even let anybody talk about it in front of her. She wanted a surprise and she admits the movie “indeed surprised her by nose diving in the theatres”. I can see her state of shock—unlike her other posts, this one was quite laconic, filled with a lot of oversized, black ant-like emoticons.

Anadi, a regular reader and commenter on my blog from Tampa, Florida presents his review on a comment on my RoR. He finds the movie can be watched once despite the criticism, because of its freshness. He believes SLB tried to stretch a half-hour movie to over two hours with filler material that just does not fill up. Like LongBlackVeil, he also senses a lack of chemistry between the debuts, who are otherwise impressive. He says Bhansali's fairytale viewpoint cannot be considered an excuse to a lack of script and pathetic dialogues.

Nova, Bangalore-based crazy, eccentric, conceited, independent, emotionally detached and a near fanatic for things she believes in, is the only blogger I read who is all praises for Saawariya. She feels the movie was two hours of pure bliss, a visual delight and music to ears sore of cacophony people sell in the name of music. She believes the new kid has met all tremendous expectations he had set. Now, Ms Nova, he would definitely have met all expectations and made it a visual delight with his towel sequences. She finds Sonam to be ordinary, just like you would expect a debutante to be. So she also met expectations! All tremendous ones! But alas, the poor thing did not get a chance to have a sequence in a towel, let alone drop one. Anyways, Nova warns her readers not to watch it for mindless jokes and dumb action but to watch it if you want to watch a poetry in motion on celluloid! She goes on to quote a phew! comments from people on indiafm.com before ending.

So, will I go and watch the movie? Don’t know. If I get company I might. Am not too keen; might watch the grandeur on my beloved laptop. I shall, however, continue adding RoRs to this post as other feeds on my reader show up Saawariya. But one way SLB disappointed me was by naming it ‘Saawariya’, which is not a word. The correct word is ‘Saanwariya’ (साँवरिया)— one of Lord Krishna’s names, derived from ‘Saanwla’—and I thought SLB was quite meticulous and sort of perfectionist. Maybe kyunkii he is quite superstitious too and some numerologist advised him otherwise, who could anyways not spare him from the wrath of critics and reviewers, and of course ashes’ also for spelling it incorrectly in Hindi too!

Weekend Sunrise

No assignments to be submitted in the morning, no exams to be attempted, and no deadlines to be met. But it reminded me of the good old hostel days when we used to stay awake through the major part of the night idling away, watching a movie, or simply chatting, or playing NFS or even watch someone else play. I really enjoyed the night-out yesterday reading, writing, watching, playing, crunching numbers, and getting nostalgic doing the various other things I generally enjoy on my computer.

During my joie de vivre, little did I realize the most gratifying part lay at the end of the night. It was just before the break of dawn when I crept up to the terrace, afraid I might wake up Mom, in which case I’d have got chided for being up all night.


The morning tranquil was so soothing, so fresh, and so cool. There were a few stray birds chirping here and there. The entire east side of the sky was a hue of yellowish-orange, getting redder by the minute. And then there was this flock of birds frolicking in the far south, circling about in a huge wave. A couple of joggers caught my eye on the pavement beneath.

And then I saw it. The scarlet disc came out proudly out of the distant horizon, making the sky blush and turn into a crimson red.


I can’t remember when was the last time did I see the sun rise. Must have been ages. In fact I felt I had never felt the same ever before. It was such an exhilarating experience I could see my vision blurred of moistness. The expressions are inexplicable in words.


I never knew the sun rises so fast. One moment (06:22:03 AM) I saw a segment of it, and then suddenly (06:24:18 AM) it was the whole disc, and another moment (06:27:14 AM) it was bright enough to form a glare on my lens.


When I came down, Mom was already awake and was extremely surprised to see me coming from outside rather than from my room. Papa was up too, and I had another exalting experience: I prepared the morning tea for everyone, unlike another long time that my parents have been doing it for me everyday.

PS: The pictures above are actually thumbnails...you might want to click on them and enjoy the full-sized photographs.

BackRub

Ms Brown was not in a position to haggle. She was recently divorced and living with her sister, so when a small technology start-up offered her a job in 1999, she welcomed it with open arms. The post paid $450 a week, plus a pile of what were then worthless stock options. She was the 41st employee of the organization, which, like many other startups, was incorporated in a garage by two students.

Today, nine years later, the company has 15,916 employees, sports a revenue of $10.6 billion (2006), has a stock market worth of $207 billion, and is the most popular name on the internet—Google. Ms Brown is one of the 1000 employees who have accrued fortunes of at least $5 million apiece from the web-giant.

Oh, did I tell you about Ms Brown's job profile? She was hired as a masseuse. After five years of kneading engineers’ backs, she retired, cashing in most of her stock options, which were worth millions of dollars. Phoebe, are you listening?

Google shares recently hit an all-time high of $747.24, up nearly 900% from their debut. “I saved enough stock for a rainy day, and lately it’s been pouring,” Ms Brown said. “Every time I give some away, it just keeps filling up again,” she told The New York Times of the fortune that she reaped from her former employer in the course of just five years. She now owns a large house of her own and spends time travelling the world overseeing the charitable foundation that she founded with her windfall.

She is also looking for a publisher for her memoir—"Giigle: How I Got Lucky Massaging Google". And as you would expect, these days, at least once a week, she splashes out on her own private masseuse.

PS: The Google search engine was originally nicknamed "BackRub" (because the system checked backlinks to estimate a site's importance). I wonder whether that was Ms Brown's suggestion.

The Sun Also Sets

People have been complaining of long, boring posts. I have been trying, but could not write small posts. Napolean Bonaparte once said, "Un bon croquis vaut mieux qu'un long discours". So I thought I'd not write this time, but let pictures speak.

Here are a few captures of the Bangalore sky at sunset with different modes on my new camera.

PS: Any references to Anadi's post and to Hemingway's masterpiece are purely coincidental. :)

PPS: Napolean's quote literally translates to: "A good sketch is better than a long speech", which later evolved into "A picture is worth a thousand words".

Book Cover Tag

I have been tagged. The tagger is Cuckoo in her post here and in a comment to a previous post of mine.

Well, as most of you, I am not well-versed with tagging. Googling did not help much on this ‘tag’. Wikipedia gives me several uses of ‘Tag’, and the nearest is a game in which one child chases the others; the one who is caught becomes the next chaser. So, tagging is a children’s game. But another use Wikipedia gives is to engage in sexual intercourse, which is not exactly child stuff. So, I force myself to believe that tagging is no child’s play, and therefore accept this tag. And anyways, it is not everyday a sweet lady asks you to play with her. [Pun absolutely unintentional!]

From what I learnt from Cuckoo’s blog and the numerous tags she’s been doing, the blog version of ‘Tagging’ involves assigning a task to a few fellow bloggers, who, according to the ‘Tag Etiquette’, would do that task and pass it on to a few more in the blogger fraternity, thereby forming a tree of playful bloggers writing on a common topic. Then probably the best blogger gets a cotton candy or a lollipop. However, if you would seriously like to browse through tag etiquettes, Cuckoo has a ready reference here.

So, the tag given to me is: Go to the advanced book search on Amazon, type your first name into the Title field, and post the most interesting/amusing cover that shows up. This is a sort of egosurfing, the wikipedia link of which I had sent to Cuckoo on my first comment on her blog, and she was quite amused.

Anyways, coming down to business, I did the above exercise with “Ashutosh”, and was disappointed to find only one book: Sir Ashutosh Mookherjea, a character study, by one Mr. Bipin Chandra Pal. Now, Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee was an Indian educator and Vice Chancellor of the University of Calcutta from 1906 to 1924. He was also responsible for the foundation of the Bengal Technical Institute in 1906 and the Calcutta University College of Science in 1914.

That was all I could read about Sir Ashutosh when I started yawning and decided to move on to run an Amazon book search on “ashes”, a self-proclaimed anglicized version of the shortened form of my name, which returned 4,567 results—a prime number.

The first book cover that interests me is Ashes to Ashes (Blood Ties, Book 3) by Jennifer Armintrout. This is what the description of the book says:

Being a vampire is a life or death situation. When I was first turned, I had only my survival to worry about. Now I'm locked in a battle for the existence of the entire human race and the cards are definitely stacked against me.

The Voluntary Vampire Extinction Movement headquarters are destroyed, and their pet horror, the Oracle, is on the loose. She'll stop at nothing to turn the world into a vampire's paradise, even if it means helping the Soul Eater become a god and harnessing his power for her own evil ends.

An ancient vampire, a blood sucking near deity and oh, yeah, my presently human former sire thrown into the mix. I say bring it on. May the best monster win.

Sounds interesting. However, I’ll have to read the Books One (The Turning) and Two (Possession) before picking up Ashes to Ashes. Book Two sounds all the more interesting:
With the Soul Eater and my possessed sire on the loose, I have a lot to fear. Including being killed. Again.

Another interesting book I saw on the same page of the search results was Robert F. Bruner’s Deals from Hell: M&A Lessons that Rise Above the Ashes, which, according to the Wall Street Journal on 26^th May, 2005: “engages in the kind of candid thinking that has long been missing from the high stack of books”.

According to the author, six key elements embedded in disasters are 'complexity, tight coupling, management choices, cognitive biases, business not as usual, and failure of the operational team.' In unison, these are lethal, he cautions. He uncovers the real reasons for mishaps by taking a closer look at twelve specific instances of M&A failure in his three-part book. Bruner dins in before parting: “The growth that matters is growth in economic value. The rest is smoke.”

A few other interesting titles on subsequent pages were “Quit Kissing my Ashes”, “Dropping Ashes on the Buddha”, “Amber and Ashes”, “Ashes to Gold”, “Rising from the Ashes”, “Hearts from the Ashes”, “Ashes of Victory”, “Ashes of Roses”—the list is so long I believe there is a book title on whatever can be converted to ashes, or whatever can be risen from ashes.

An interesting game, and an interesting tag, I must admit. However, I shall not be able to follow the ‘tag etiquettes’ and pass on the baton. But obviously, if anyone wants to pick it up themselves from here, please. Now Cuckoo, where is my lollipop?

Project Dark Chamber

Thank you Saurabh, who got me the camera I longed for so long, or, actually, was planning for so long to get one, and maybe longed to save a few thousand rupees on the deal.

Thank you Diya, who purchased my camera thrice, from three different websites, but all three times the order was cancelled by the different companies for different reasons:

1. the billing address not being the same as the shipping address,
2. their policy not allowing them to deliver at an office address, and
3. the item running out of stock, even after the order was placed and accepted.

Poor Deepak Garg had to keep haunting online shopping stores for me during his entire stay at NY.

Thank you Andy, who purchased a camera for me online but they wouldn’t deliver it to the hotel Saurabh was staying in. Anadi had to brave against the bank call center personnel who couldn’t spell and pronounce Anadi Misra because despite sitting in North India, they were supposed to be attending a call from the US and hence were expected to fancy an American accent.

Finally I’ve got one; anything could have gone wrong anywhere considering my luck with digital cameras. I half expected half of my savings on the camera would be used to bribe the customs officials. I was skeptical till I actually got the camera in my hands almost five weeks ago, thankfully without further glitches. The credit for the camera goes to Saurabh's luck (and of course, to him as well), and this belated post can be credited to none other than my favorite activity—procrastination.

The one Saurabh Jain smuggled for me is a Sony DSC-T100. As with every other decision of mine, this one too was quite difficult and took a long time. I researched on the host of models available in the market, visited the various camera websites, shortlisted a few (eight) cameras based on my preferences and budget, and tabulated their series of features in another favorite—an MS Excel spreadsheet. After confusing myself and contagiously spreading it to Andy, Bharvi, Dheeru, Diya, Kaler, Sandy, Saurabh, and almost everyone I saw as a camera owner, I finally decided on the T100 from outside my spreadsheet and over my budget.

It was probably not the best choice, but you'd be asking for too much if you expect the qualities of Mallika Sherawat and Gulzar in one person. While I craved for a high zoom, I had also wanted to show off my sleek camera slide out of my pocket. T100 had the highest optical zoom in the ultra slim category. It is a good camera for indoor, point and shoot photography at family functions et cetera, and has a few extra flashy features, and an impressive UI with some sound effects. Well, technically it meets expectations, but let me save the details for another post.

However, as I write this post and visit the Sony website, as it happens with all gizmos and technologies, I discover that DSC-T100 has been refurbished and a new DSC-T200 has been launched, with a wider touch-screen at the same price, and some extra features I did not bother to look into. Thank God I did not have another option to choose from while deciding.

Life or Something Like it

It has been quite some time many of the regular readers of this irregular blog have been asking now and then about its well-being. Well, I might say my blog reflects my life, and irregularity is a part of life, and so are randomness, uncertainty and unpredictability. This non-linear phenomenon sounds like discrete entropy, but that is what life resembles, only that you cannot measure it quantitatively. The absence of all this causes anything to get stagnant and drain all thrill out of it, be it a subatomic particle, or a highly complex human machinery, or an ever-fluctuating stock market index. They are of interest as long they are volatile. This applies to life as well.

I tried fathom the reason for this four-post old blog not getting any older, and reflected upon what I have been doing for the past few months, in the process of which I realized I’ve been unknowingly following 17^th century philosophizer Baruch de Spinoza’s 67^th Proposition in Part IV of his magnum opus, "The Ethics":

Homo liber nulla de re minus quam de morte cogitat; et ejus sapientia non mortis sed vitae meditatio est.
(There is nothing over which a free man ponders less than death; his wisdom is, to meditate not on death but on life.)

Contemplate on life did I, but coming to, or even trying to come to, a conclusion about life in such a short time would be blasphemous. The egocentric part of me was concerned more about my own life, which is as at ease and peaceful as one would want. But, as aforesaid, stagnation makes it dull. Joblessness adds boredom. A lack of ambition and sense of direction makes it dreadful. Random, silly, stupid, insane, horrendous, impossible, weird, long chains of thoughts keep fluttering in from nowhere and everywhere.

So why was I absent from my not-so old blog? Was I able to get to the root cause? What was keeping me busy? Nothing—there was no worthy reason—as I admitted above, the work load was not enough to cramp me up. Actually I was upset, frustrated, brooding, anxious and irritable; I was cribbing, angry with the world, with myself, was picking up quarrels with most of my well-wishers on trivial issues. My sincere apologies to my parents, sisters, and friends.

I am as confused as to why am I writing this as to why am I living life the way I am—stagnant, boring, lone, insecure, restless are a few fitting adjectives. Procrastination has reached its pinnacle. Basic tasks that require immediate attention stay put for weeks. Life is getting lethargic, routine, and I am getting older. Life is moving at a pace I don’t like. I was (I wish to think I still am) the kind of guy who, given a choice between choosing a stable, peaceful path and one involving hurdles and experimentation, would always choose the latter. Of late, however, things have been quite different. There have been times I want to do many things at a time, and end up doing none. Or worse, start something, reach a twentieth or fiftieth or hundredth of it, and then abandon it. There have been times I do not want to do anything at all—not even lie down and think.

There are a hundred things I could do to keep me engaged, you would suggest. I already know hundred and one. I know the problem, and I know the solution; I have been only too foolish/lazy to incorporate it and find something really engrossing.

In the song about discontent with life entitled "Why Georgia", John Mayer muses:

Might be a quarter-life crisis
Or just a stirrin' in my soul
Either way
I wonder sometimes
About the outcome
Of a still verdictless life
Am I living it right?

This makes me do a double take on whether I am living it right? Am I suffering from a quarter-life crisis? I wonder if that is it, would I automatically get rid of it once I age to the third from the quarter?

Innocent craving

He wore a shabby, oversized shirt, and his half-pants ended just a couple of inches lower than the shirt. His hair was unkempt, and his dark eyes shone on the dark face. He looked like he was seven-eight years of age. He did not say anything, but started pulling at the hem of my friend’s kurta.

It was a sunny September afternoon. After a good lunch, we had gone out for an icecream. There is this Food World on Cunningham Road, and yes, it is not a great place to have icecreams but it was close to office and they did house Cornetto, one she really liked. We bought a cone and since Food Worlds are grocery stores, we had to seat ourselves on my bike parked in front of the store.

No sooner had she started enjoying her cone, this little boy came from nowhere and started begging. He was exactly the kind of kid you would like to shoo away—the typical child who begs at the traffic signal. Dirty and unkempt, he did not utter a single voice, but started pulling at my friend’s dress. Seeing my friend getting irritated and disturbed out of her Cornetto, I did what almost everyone does in a similar situation; I tried dissuading him but he was stubborn. I generally disapprove of beggars, but offer them something sometimes to avoid their pestering. Thinking he was just asking for money, I gave him a five-rupee coin, which he gladly pocketed. I had believed he would go away.

I was wrong. He continued poking and touching and pulling and gesturing with his little hands. We had now got down from our perch and I again tried to drive him away. He was all the more adamant. My friend had got flustered and wanted him to leave and had started shooing him. I was wondering whether what I gave him was too less and that he wanted more money. Maybe he was hungry, but we could not have given him the half-eaten cone my friend was really enjoying.

She then suggested: “Yeh kahin nahi jaayega ashu, hum hi office chalte hain”. I considered that the best option and drove back the half-kilometer to office, where I joined my friend in finishing up the cornetto, after which both of us went to our respective cubicles to continue work.

It was when I reached my cubicle when I realized what a blunder I had committed!!!! Waves of guilt churned inside my stomach. All this time I was irritated by the child’s pestering and did not realize that he was asking us to buy him something unachievable for him!!! Even if he had the money, he would not be allowed inside a Food World and there was no way he could buy a cone!! Couldn’t wonder at the helplessness of the poor child.

He was probably mute, or perhaps chose to remain silent because he would not speak anything other than Kannada. Whatever the reason be, but all the time he had an eye on the icecream, and was gesturing us to buy him one, which both of us failed to understand. I admit we never tried to. We were too irritated to try and understand what he meant. I still remember those dark eyes requesting in vain and the disappointed and sad face when we decided to run away from him.

Ashamed of myself, I went back to the store, but could not find him around. Perhaps he had dropped the idea of an icecream, or someone more intelligent had understood and quenched his craving.

After this unforgettable episode, I kept an eye for him whenever I went to Cunningham Road, but could never spot him. And yes, we could never go again for an icecream after lunch.

Whose fault is it anyway?

Two third-standard boys picked up a wire from the ground, tied it around the neck of their classmate and strangled him to death. All over a pencil.

These were the opening lines of an article on the front page of the Bangalore edition of Times of India last Saturday. Apart from the shock, the first thing that crossed my mind was how could this have been averted. Who can be held responsible for this young life coming to an untimely end? Is a human life’s worth less than that of a pencil?

The boys subsequently told the police that they didn’t realize what they were doing.

The boys would have seen this in some movie and had tried to imitate that without having any clue about the consequence of their act. This is similar to children trying out moves out of WWF and TNA shows, and imitating Spiderman and Superman, and even the desi Shaktiman. The inspiration for the act would have been some action sequence the twelve- and the nine-year olds would have seen on TV or a movie. They knew this would hurt, but did not know it could lead to death.

This would have happened at such a normal occasion that none of the school authorities would have paid attention—children do quarrel over small things, but who would have imagined someone getting killed in the process?

Children learn from every incident, every visual, and every sound they encounter, see, and hear. There is no way we can stop any of those. We cannot prevent children from watching TV; banning all forms of violence on screen is not feasible either. Parents cannot, and should not, censor absolutely everything their children watch and talk about. Keeping a check on all forms of tiffs between children is also not possible.

It is not necessary to put someone at fault but there is something that is not right somewhere. Imagine the plight of the three-years elder brother of the 9-year old victim, who went to rescue him seeing him fighting, only to see him collapse to death when they reached home.

Whose fault is it? Is there anything we (read anyone) can do to prevent such losses?

Three years ago...

It has been three years today that I started working, but it seems a very long time ago. 27^th of June, 2004 was the day I boarded my first flight and the next day I joined Tavant Technologies. Clothed in neat formals, I was apprehensive about how would I survive in this alien software industry and the corporate world as I took the long auto ride. The first thing I did at office was meet the HR person who had given me the offer letter a little over a month earlier. Things look so distant I have actually forgotten what happened next. From my more recent experiences at joining at other places I can guess I would have filled up a few forms, met new people, and tried to be friends with them. I would have gone out for lunch at one of those various restaurants in Koramangala, and would have had coffee later at the office.

I had a three-week long training as soon as I joined, along with eight (or were they nine?) other guys and one girl. But I don’t remember whether it started the same day or the next.

Exactly two years later, 28^th of June, 2006, I bought my first bike. The date was not planned, it just happened to coincide with my date of getting employed. I would not have remembered it at all had it not been the same day.

I don’t remember many of my friends’ birthdays and anniversaries. I don’t remember the date of my first date, I don’t remember when did I start to shave (I am not even able to recall the month), don’t remember the date I had those painful surgeries. But, strangely enough, I distinctly remember today, and I remember the 17^th of July, 2000, my first day at college. Perhaps I had waited too long for these two days. Perhaps because these two days would change my life forever, maybe these were the two biggest ‘incidents’ of my life.

Today when I was riding to my office, I somehow knew I completed my three years of working; I did not have to think about it approaching weeks ahead as we do for birthdays, and this was the most surprising. At times I forget what date is it today, and today not only did I recall the date, it dawned upon me from somewhere the importance of this date. I cannot try and understand completely the reasons of accidental remembering of this anniversary; like at many other occasions, I can only marvel at the strength and power of the human brain!

Finally...

When I logged into my blogger account last weekend, I found Blogger has metamorphosed: the latest beta version (codenamed Invader) was released and then taken out of beta, there were a host of features never seen before, and Blogger had completely moved out from Pyra Labs’ servers to Google operated ones—I had to integrate my blogger account with my google account to start posting.

Well, I was bitten by the blog bug sometime in October 2005 when I created this blogger account. However, it was mainly to post non-anon comments at friends’ blogs, and with a faint hope that I would start blogging myself sometime. Finally the hope fulfils. :)

I was surprised at how fast things change. (Yes I know I should expect time to fly)—it has only been a year and a half, and I find everything around me has changed. I’ve had two job switches, my parents moved to Bangalore, I’ve grown shoulder-length hair and switched back to crew cuts at least thrice. My friends have been going places, hopping jobs and cities and continents, some coming up with startups, others getting married, some even attaining parenthood—and I couldn’t come up with a single post in this time. But yes, I was busy elsewhere—hunting jobs you might say.

Even the topics I had thought I would write upon are either irrelevant now or I’ve forgotten the details. However, an entire new set of ideas and thoughts have come up and I intend to regularly write on them and publish.

Let us hope I do not get busy in hunting again and present you with some posts soon.