Cold you

You were so cold while you lived, you're so cold when you're dead,
If only I knew sooner that it was all in my head....

The loss of the second basket

Why do all the bollywood movies(of today) made on youth have a confused, directionless soul playing the lead, at least in the first half? No, I have not seen "Wake up Sid" yet but I've heard that it's no different. Our generation might look a little lost when compared to the earlier generations' but are they really to be blamed for this?

Everything in the next paragraph is completely figurative and a little personal(basically personal, hence figurative) so I would suggest you to skip this part if you don't know me well.

Well, last week I went to the market and bought some eggs. Since I was carrying only one basket, and I had heard it's not a good thing to have "put all your eggs in one basket", I decided to buy another one. When the handle of the first basket came off because of the astronomical no of eggs I have put inside, I coolly started looking for the second one. To my horror I realised the basket was stolen. Our parents faced such problems of having to carry all the eggs in only one(that too broken) basket so often that they never got confused when faced with such a situation. But we do, because we know that there is always another basket available: sometimes found, sometimes undiscovered, sometimes found and then lost again(like my stolen basket).

We, the youth of today are dangerously used to having options in our life, at every point of it. The loss of the second basket did not make my choice easier, even though it looks so. Repair the basket? Throw the eggs? Throw myself down from some hilltop? The more I try to convince myself to simply carry the eggs in the broken basket, the more weird options I see available.

PS: While asking for directions at life's important stages, can't we have someone similar to a traffic policeman, who can simply point in the right direction and say "signal se left and then the next right"? Just a thought.

The final goodbye

While one of the last few good souls was saying its final goodbye,
The ignorant me was hundreds of miles away, wondering why
The world suddenly looked more evil, the people more sly.

Blabber on...

I met one of my 1st year juniors, SM today. OK, a 1st yr junior in Engg college parlance is someone 3 yrs junior to you, the same way a final yr senior means someone 3 yrs senior to you. When you speak of a junior, you assume yourself to be in final yr and while referring to a senior, you consider yourself to be a 1st yr student. At least this is how things were in my college.

This is roughly the 40th-60th minute excerpt of the 2 hour conversation we had over beer. "Roughly", I said.

SM: Well saying this seems odd, but I want to fall in love.
ME: With whom or what?
SM: I don't care. I see so many people falling in and out of it everyday. I umm...I just want to experience it. At least for a day, preferably with a girl and as soon as possible.
ME: You know what you are talking about?
SM: I sure do. I am talking about programming my emotions.
ME: If I hurt you now and ask you to hold your tears until next monday afternoon, would you be able to do that.
SM: No
ME: Then you can't programme your emotions and as a direct consequence of it, can't plan to fall in love either. But there is one thing I am pretty sure of.
SM: That one day I will?
ME: Precisely.
SM: What makes you so sure of one thing and so unsure of the other?
ME: Hmmm...it's like predicting that 2 of the 10 molecules of a given radioactive sample is going to disintegrate in next 6 months. But if you ask me things like, "which 2", or "which one would be the 1st one to go", I will have no clue.
SM: But don't you believe, everything that can be sensed, can be programmed too?
ME: I do. But our capabilities, our programming capabilities to be precise are limited, however advance they may appear to you. Mathematically speaking, we do not know how many parameters are there, and how do they interact with each other to generate one particular emotion. You may say it's just hormones controlling it. But my question is what controls the secretion of the hormones in the first place. How do our brains decide that a particular quantity of adrenalin would be optimum for a particular emergency...

...And we blabberred on, while "Nothing else matters" changed to "I wanna be a rockstar" in the background.

Q n A

Last month, when I was in Mumbai, I met a cousin of mine who is around 20 years younger to me. Talking to her was like being on the show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire where she was the host and I was a contestant with no lifelines. I kept answering her questions patiently but when she used the word "black" for describing someone's complexion I thought I must correct her. What followed was a hell of an interesting conversation, though I don't remember it entirely.
Me: You mean dark complexion.
She: What's the difference?
Me: Well "black" sounds awkward and besides, it's racist too.
She: What's awkward and what's racist?
I explained both the terms to her.
She: If I say "white", will that also be racist?
Me: It'll be but not as racist as saying black.
She: Why not?
By this time I had become extremely uncomfortable. Had it been a grown-up asking me this question in the course of a debate or argument,I could have said a thousand things because the focus in those cases is not on answering the question. Your goal is to confuse the person you are talking to by saying something really clever to win the argument but when you talk to a 8 year old kid, it's a completely different ball game, trust me. The focus is not on winning the argument but on telling the kid the right thing. You can't mislead them because of your lack of knowledge. So for a change, I honestly accepted that I didn't know the exact answer to her question and stayed silent.

Well everyone keeps asking me if they would be alive to see the day when I would honestly admit not knowing about something which seems really complicated to me. I sometime feel like telling them that the only thing that sounds complicated to me in this world are questions of 2 words, asked by 8 year olds.

A day of unanswered questions.

1. What are nightmares seen during the day called and what about daydreaming at night?
2. Why do I see so many people unhappy around me when everyone says he is fine/good/excellent/great blah blah in response to how is he doing?
3. If great minds think alike, do I really have to be mediocre to innovate?

In defence of insomnia

There are some feelings we experience only in hindsight. I remember my dad had a very peculiar way of appreciating my mom's cullinary skills. Whenever she made something that tasted really yummy, he would say it's good but not as good as it was made on some previous date. One day i asked him "why then you do not say it to her on that day itself". Which was once replied with, "how do you know something is really good if you have not seen it getting worse on subsequent attempts". I did not quite understand it. But I was so young then...and I used to sleep so well.

Insomniacs also experience things after they had occurred. If they wake up in the morning feeling refreshed and ready-to-go, they know that last day was a day well spent. If they wake up with red and/or swollen eyes, they know it had been a normal day. If they don't have to wake up-you have to be asleep to wake up, right?- they are thankful that the day(and the night) is over.

Sometimes we are happy, which is good and normal. Sometimes we are not very sure of what makes us happy, which is weird. But then sometimes we are so clueless about the cause of our happiness, we fail to recognise that we are happy at all, which is normal again. Normal people always miss out on those mysterious, hidden, undetectably happy moments. Insomniacs never do. They always know it the next day. Every morning I feel great, I think of my dad, smile and say to myself, "he was so right"!

PS: Does it also happen when we are really down and depressed without an apparent reason? I don't think so. I, personally could never hide my sadness from myself.

Off-ish in office.

3:30 PM: After clicking the Refresh button of my LOTUS Notes inbox for what seemed like the thousandth time, I decided to face the fact that I am definitely, completely and somewhat comfortably bored. Comfortably because I am in office right now and being bored doesn't seem like a bad option when you look around and see analysts working their ass off and managers desperately trying to look busy- and they do it really well I tell you, as they look so BC to me all the time.

4 PM: Went for an S break with Jan and Ran. Couldn't help thinking, an S break is not always caused by S breaking work.

6 PM: When the load of boredom started becoming unbearable in just the 5th hour of office, I decided to share it with my immediate neighbours. The 1st one gave me an offer which sounded very much like Netaji's classic "freedom for blood" offer...he asked me to share his work and he would share my boredom in exchange which i outrightly rejected and went to the next prospective victim. He welcomed me with an oh-God-not-now look which I conveniently ignored and started cracking the dumbest jokes I could imagine to which he kept flashing his monotonous is-this-the-last-one smile and soon enough I couldn't ignore it any longer and had to go for the third person who was my last hope. Seeing him completely engrossed with his work, I asked him in a deliberately kept casual voice if there is something I could help him with. If I say I was hurt by his reply, that would be an understatement. He told me to get him a calendar from somewhere and to f%^$ off once I have done that or if I am not able to do that! I told him he already has one and was about to point the damn thing out kept right in front of him when I realised it is of yesteryear. I took the calendar from him, blacked out name of the days written on top and re-wrote the new and correct ones(for every month) under it as per a 2009 calendar.

8 PM: No, I didn't have a whiskey. That guy simply didn't appreciate my innovation verbally or visually but kept the calendar anyway. This thanklessness pissed me off so greatly that I had to literally go for it. For the piss, not for the calendar.

9:30 PM: Inspired by the famous Matrix dialogue "everything that has a beginning, must have an end", I wait with Asha.

10:00 PM: End of day, end of blog. I leave with Mukti.

Of ironies

1. I decided to study maths instead of biology once I realised(after reading the chapter on paddy pests) that I will never be able to remember names such as Leptocorisa Varicornis, Tryporisa Insertulous and Hispa Armizera for my life...and the irony is I still remember those 3 names, 10 years after reading about them.

2. I used to be very embarrased of my malnourished looks 7-8 years back, so I decided to put on some weight and even before I could thank the Almighty for being able to accomplish this, this old crush of mine suddenly bumps into me one day and exclaims "Oh, you have gained a lot of weight recently, you used to look so athletic back then!". I am still hoping she meant that as a compliment.

3. I don't know how many people are with me on his, but I am at my forgetful best when I am desperately trying not to forget a particular thing...as a result forgetting everything else apart from that particular thing or sometimes one particular aspect of that particular thing.
For example, i remember in college I used to ask my friends who has played the main character in Ben Hur. Initially, everyone (who knew)told me coolly that it's Charlton Heston but when i kept asking the same question over and over again, they got irritated and stopped answering my question. I got worried and focussed so much on not forgetting this name in future that one fine morning I woke up thinking, "who is this guy Charlton Heston and why am I always thinking of this name". I gave it a name too - "The Charlton Heston Syndrome".

4. Sometimes the persons I have missed the most were sitting next to me!

Of observations and realisations.

1. The reason most of the time people looking for their specs have them on is not that they are forgetful....it's the subconscious belief that looking for anything without wearing the glasses is fruitless anyway.

2. The reason Hulk-The Green Monster's trouser is never torn while his shirt is ripped into pieces, when he grows in size is not that his hips or legs do not expand at all in the process; that would look ridiculous....it is the complete trust of the directors of such movies on the dumbness of its viewers which makes it possible.

3. The reason people write "pun intended" is not that their gift of being naturally funny has assumed gargantuan proportions...it is because they don't have anything funny to say and hence don't want to let go of this opportunity to crack a joke.

4. I had no idea why a computer is called a "pee sea" until I saw "I pee: 192.168.0.1" on my screen one day.

The curious case of Neetu Bharatiya...and her sister!

Neetu Bharatiya, a girl in my school I thought existed merely because people didn't know her sister's name. Her sister was always referred to as "Neetu Bharatiya's sister" and never with her real/actual name. Sometimes I even considered the possibility of that phrase being her real name but could never be sure as asking someone to confirm this would have made my "inadequate knowledge" in girls, public and that I tell you would have been a bigger embarrasment than asking your class teacher's name. It was only 3-4 years after passing out of that school that I got to meet her in flesh in a get together of sorts and I noticed 2 things instantly; she had a charming smile and a weird laughter. Everytime she laughed, I thought she was trying to mock someone. But all in all she definitely seemed like one worthy of being talked about, which confused me even more. And then I forgot all about it, till yesterday, when a happily giggling soul brought back the memories of her laughter, her sister and finally her.

This time, confident of my expertise in analysing matters of great and complete uselessness, I decided to crack this mystery of inseperability of two names for once and all.

I took the same approach that Phaedrus took to understand Quality. I likened my dilemma to the 2 front horns of a charging bull and then examined them one by one. I took the left horn first and considered the hypothesis that Neetu Bharatiya's sister was more popular than her and thus featured in all kinds of conversations more often than Neetu Bharatiya herself. But this looked like an incomplete explanation as it did not give a suitable reason for her not having a name of her own. Thus I refuted the premise and focussed on the right horn. The 2nd premise was of Neetu Bharatiya being more popular than her sister which was supported by the argument that less popular things are always referenced using more popular ones. But then why the heck do I always hear about her sister and never about her, i thought and rejected the 2nd premise too.

Like Phaedrus, I was aware that all classic dilemmas afford 3 refutations and that got me thinking of some more rhetoric and less logical/scientific hypotheses.

So I theorised that may be her sister was new to the school but was becoming popular very rapidly but then I thought hard and remembered that her sister had spent more time in that school than she had.

Maybe, I assumed, her parents christened her as Kyishaiwnnae or Rikialria and as tongue twisters are quite out of fashion now, people simply used the more usable name. But still I couldn't see the point of not shortening her name to Kyi/Shai/Nae or Riki/Rial/Ria as we usually do instead of using an indirect reference.

Finally I thought may be...just may be she was the real Voldemort...the invincible Lord Voldemort who survived. That would explain everything, like why people gossiped so much about her and why was she the-one-who-must-not-be-named. This theory made more sense than all the other theories put together. My school was so weird that it could very well have been a Muggle Studies Centre for magic world. May be You-know-who understood what went wrong and went to my school to understand normal human/muggle emotions....may be all the time we thought he was dead, he was getting stronger....may be he is just biding his time....may be this time he will win. I just hope "Harry Potter and the Sister of Neetu Bharatiya" comes out soon!

A reporting analyst's Catch 22(i)

I "excel" in ACCESS
.... .have "access" to IMAKE
then why the hell do "I make" in EXCEL!!!