Honnemaradu...

With a certain pesky animal out of the way, the time was ripe. But the plot had been hatched weeks ago knowing that this time would come. Maybe it’s the monsoons of India or plain ad-hoc-ism that this time of the year I get extremely interested to shrug the world off and head into the wild! And boy, we just did that and how!

This time around it was a often-trekkers-known place called Honnemaradu near the Karnataka district of Shimoga. Nine of us office guys-n-gals packed minimum stuff and headed to this environment friendly place where no smoking, drinking or even outside food is allowed. The facilities were also minimal with only an open well and four walls to do as a bathroom and a dilapidated toilet with a single pipe outside as the only source of water! But the staff in-charge at the place was skilled and well mannered and helped us have a great time.

The weekend spent in the islands was exhilarating and calming at the same time. The serene surroundings with nothing but wilderness around were a treat to the eyes. But what activities were planned for us took us into the groove! First we had a few hours of life-jacket aided swimming in the Sharavathi River, in the backwaters of the Linganamakki dam. Then we took coracles into the river and learnt the basics of rowing and maintaining direction. After a really tiring session in the waters we came back for lunch and after resting for sometime we headed off to one of the islands for a night camp and bon-fire et all!

It already got dark before we reached the island and then we all had to take our torches out to find wood for the fire. After a crazy half an hour of finding dead twigs and wood as fuel [we are not to uproot any tree for this purpose] it was just we and the stars. All of us learnt the basics of laying out a tent in the middle of nowhere and then had to put up one ourselves. After that we had a great buccaneering session – just the fire for light and high pitched songs under the billion stars. Stuff of dreams! :)

Early morning we rose with the sun and had the arguably best half an hour of our trip. Sitting silently on the shore of a water body watching the sun rise in all its splendor, disturbing early morning mist and clearing the clouds is one experience worth having a 1000 times. Then we rowed back to the mainland and after a great breakfast of poori-sabji we were all ready for the trek up the nearby hill. We walked the trail of 1.5 kms that lead us to the hill top from where we could see the winding river and all the islands sprayed around and also the dam at a distance.

All was not yet over and we once again forayed into the river and this time as pairs in canoes. We had to put to practice what we learnt about rowing and each pair rowed to a distant island from the mainland and back. I would say it gave a sense of self-worth. Though we did not want to leave the place we already had a train waiting for us back to Bangalore. So we left with a heavy heart but a heady experience from Honnemarudu to Jog falls before taking our train back home.

I am going back again!

The out-of-the-world week that was!

Wow what a week it was! I am yet to come out of the heady feeling that I was in, throughout week Jul9-Jul15. Without any shadow of doubt, it has been the best week of my life, as I comprehend it now. Even if I do want to bring it all in here and save it for posterity, read it sometime in the future and derive happiness from the words, I don’t know if I would do justice to those inner feelings through these mere words. All I would want to do is capsule this week’s time for repeated consumption! Alas… time won’t wait, so here it all comes in the blog.

Sun Mon Tue – Marriage (growing up)

The 9th and 10th of July was my cousin’s marriage. Being a part of this family function and also playing a useful part in the proceedings gave me immense satisfaction and was sure a learning, growing experience. In simple words, my inner voice said – ‘you are now 24!’ And I can assure you that’s not a bad feeling at all. 11th was rest day and nothing works better than taking leave from office spending ‘quality’ time with near and dear ones. I enjoyed the food, the people and everything about the big fat wedding! :)

Wed Thurs – Food (Bliss)

The excellent streak of amazing food that I had in Chennai stretched into Bangalore also. 12th July, Wednesday was super lunch at Krishna Kafe. 13 July, Thursday was shopping@ Forum and dinner at Pizza Hut. Of course the company I had for both the sessions made the midweek worth remembering! ;)

Friday [Jul 14] – Crossing borders

This was predestined I suppose! The storyline is, a someone from across the globe decides to go on a crazy ‘hat-hunt’ with a equally crazy guy across the city! And did the rain-god have a ‘dry’ sense of humor or what! Both of us were totally-totally drenched before we could reach the theatre for the evening show! [Albeit with our prize cap safe with us]. The consensus was that, if only the movie was for a smaller duration, Superman Returns could have been enjoyable! And yeah, she loved the gift! :)

Saturday [Jul 15]– Perfect finish

When in a dream everything feels great but chances are that we will forget it once awake. But there are some dreams that refuse to go even after we are wide awake because the last few moments of the dream were such exhilarating moments. This Saturday was such a finish to the great week. Everything (well almost) was perfect about the trip 7 of us from office took, to Nandi Hills 60kms off Bangalore, on 4 bikes! :) The weather was just perfect for a long drive with really cool wind and the occasional drizzle. Clean roads leading to the mist covered hills in the horizon, with flush meadows / agriculture land on either side was irresistible. And I do have to mention the ‘wow’ home-made breakfast and lunch we had taken with us to the trip. I am actually unable to get words to describe the fun and frolic we had atop the hills playing cards, mocking the monkeys, taking umpteen photos and having a blast!!


Life is good, as it has been for quite sometime now and I don’t intend to stop having fun like this!

Unwind – Rewind

The past two years have been significant for more than a few reasons. It is extremely difficult to learn lessons from life as and when it is being taught. Only retrospection makes us wiser! And now as I rewind and look forward to shifting gears in life, I am sure I will cherish the memories of the past couple of years. I will keep reminding myself of small incidents that the lessons consisted of so that the crux stays with me and what I learnt does not get lost in this seeming poser that life is.

This entry seems to be THE most personal in this space as of now, but I needed to put this down to tell myself where I stand now. It is not a 100m race we run to go at one shot. It is a whole lifetime which we remember by stages and I feel I am stepping onto my next stage. God be with me.

Latest motto fad:

tEjaswi nAvadheeta mastu
(Let, what we study be invigorating)

Saha veeryam kara-vAva hai
(together, let us achieve great deeds)

Does "grey" matter??? YES IT DOES!!! :D

It’s a good feeling to WIN! And ‘we’ won it today! Nowhere near the achievement like the one below, but a win nonetheless. ;)

Ok… the ‘we’ is Karthik my roommate, Gurmeet my friend and me. We formed the ‘DOES “GReY” MATTER’ team for an event conducted by a Wipro division as celebrations for 5 years of their completion. There were two preliminary rounds where as individuals forming a team we had to display various skills. There was a standard two minutes time slot in which each of had to give our own introduction, two more minutes for displaying our latent talents [I drew! :D what else? ;)], and two more minutes for describing an incident in life that changed our perspective towards life [I talked Tsunami! easy na…life n perspective n all…:D]. So after doing all this we reached the final which was held today.

In the final we had a crazy round, where each of us had to fill forms with questions like fav color and fav holiday destination. Then the judges would exchange the sheets and ask one about the other! To check how we gel as a group and how well informed we are about each other! The next round we were given a topic to be discussed and presented for 3-4 minutes., which our team managed to do competently well.

So there! We won!!! And we get coupons to one of the retail outlets in Bangalore! Boy did we have fun! Sure! All of us are happy that 3 people who know very less about each other teamed up and the team clicked! Congrats Karthik and Gurmeet! :D

PS: There were audience-questions and moi answered correct to win myself two tickets to 'ICE AGE-2' :D!!! Cool movie!

Is it 'too late'? or not?

What you need to know

I am gung-ho!!! ‘Cos my cousin has just won a National Level competition conducted by Microsoft. No mean task! And this was a competition conducted at three levels! First at the college level at Amrita College, CBE they were asked to present papers. After being selected for a zonal presentation they had to come to Chennai, compete with some 30 odd teams and they came out trumps. I was there when these guys presented their ‘Automatic Call Taxi – Detector and Router’ project. Arun if you remember it was on your laptop this was presented! :D

Next they get selected for this National level presentation at Hosur Road, Bangalore which was held yesterday. They had to compete here with 20 teams from all over the country. And they present this [the one titled iTRUST- An End to End Trust Based Model for Access Control]. And guess what? They win it hands down! The Prof from IIT-B, who was top panelist congratulates them on this achievement. One Ms.Sheila, second only to Gates in MS as my gullible cousin put it [and I think I might be wrong here], presided over the function and gave over this cool cash prize of 75k to the team of three. Great going Chicha and friends!!! KUDOS!!! AWESOME!

What I need to know

Just when I got this sms from my cousin saying he won it, the first thing I told him is – ‘guys, this ain’t something simple. Please leave any other work you guys have and find out all the procedures for patenting this stuff. Let the 75k go towards that. ‘Cos I know anyway that you guys don’t booze! LOL’

And that’s when he told me similar sentiments were displayed by all and sundry! His HOD had asked them to patent this stuff way back when they presented his to him. But probably my guess is that even he did not know how much he meant it. Now that this has won the prize it becomes utmost priority for it to be patented immediately. Even the IIT Prof and many other corporate people who attended the seminar shared similar views.

My Question

The hitch here is, MS clearly states that they will video tape the whole event and will use any or all parts of the presentations. So how will this affect these guys patenting the stuff? Will the patent hold? I am a bit at sea regarding this patenting stuff. So am finger-crossed and waiting to hear more from my cousin. People reading this tell me what you think.

PS:

Dei Chicha, nee thaanda intha kathaila hero! Go on and put your comments here telling what all you did throughout this journey to the top! ;) oru periya kathai sollu paapome

PS2: ---- [for those who dont read the comments section only]

i got some facts wrong on top...so here's the correct version, from my cousin himself.....


hi guys n gals....actuallly he had mixed up the whole stuff...here is the real stuff..to start wit..this competition is Microsoft Student Proj..for more info visit www.msapp.net or www.microsoft.com ..last yr we presented a proj by name"Radio Taxi Management System".it carried us to south India level where we had to giv it up coz at the time of review we had exams n so cud not finish code.still after the exams we completetd the proj n got the certificate too from microsoft.now this yr bein the final yr we planned to do a proj tat was feasible within tis sem for the final univ review as well as for Microsoft specifications.so this time we did iTrust-An end to endtrust based access control.for info on this view www.msapp.net n click project exhibition link.so here the first level had 7000 teams fallin into the fight.from there we moved to the next level of competing wit 600 shortlisted teams.from there it was the India finals in banglore yday where we had our stal for exhibition among 20 best proj in the country.finally after a lot of hot judging n reviewing n exhibiting n panicking n sweating n waiting n questioning n.....there it was announced..around 6:30evenin we were told we were to present our proj o stage.still we tht its just to entertain the crowd.wat we had in store was just amazing.it was sosimilar to any film fare award festive(i mean the set up..the call for the team..the focus light on the presenters....)we did our [presentation n took our seats in the crowd.n finally wen the prize distribution came.we held our breaths only after our team werre announced the best proj team n we were offered a cheque(a big one like for the man of the match in cricket)of a small amount Rs.70000.so tat was the whole thing.

Cut to the chase!

I have never done this! Give one hell of a chase! Today, while I was entering the Chennai Koyambedu bus terminal, to book tickets for my Bangalore return journey, two guys on a bike entered the gates from the wrong direction of the main road and sped past me! And then I noticed the very 'ponchy' police man running up behind them shouting for them to stop! And where does he run out of breath?! just in front of my bike!!! He immediately got on my bike and said two words - 'Chase them'. I wasn't left with any option. Zoom I went around the bus stand and into the Koyambedu market! It was a very decent chase I should say... and that guy did a very good job of trying to avoid us but eventually ran out of steam. As soon as we caught up, they got into a heated argument and I dint want to hear any of it! I sped back to the bus stand... but such a crazy event took me off guard for a few minutes!
Wah! What an efficient police system we have!

Our President Kalam was always wedded!!

The President has been wedded for so long now, and we still keep asking him why he is still a bachelor! The neat thought that ‘patriotism’ is greater than ‘love’ is personified by our Pres. And both in fact are not two different things to him, his patriotism is his love!

Read this and see how proudly he talks about her. His heart swells for her. He always wishes well for her. He has her goals in mind, and gives her the best of ideas to go forward. He envisions her to be THE best. How lucky the bride has been! Long live their bonding!

He is wedded to the nation, and what a suitable soul mate he has been to this resurgent India!

Sir, you make us proud! Salutations!

PS: read his 'Wings of Fire', and you will realise his was a child-marriage!!!

Don’t we all have our horcruxes??

Just when I am sitting in office wondering how come none I could talk to is online today, I realized something. It is a very nebulous thought. It is, how little we would actually know about what the person we are chatting with is doing. It is totally unlike talking in person. There could be a different level of acquaintance with different person we chat with. Some we might know very well and some others we would not have seen in our dear life! And the multitudes of logins we have become our online horcruxes!! We ‘live’ on the net through them, spend considerable time talking to people over chat sessions, conversation and what not! For instance all I have seen of me dear friend in 3 years now is only a few hours we spent when he was in India. But we never lost ‘touch’ because we always do catch up online. And there is this amazing being in Canada who still never ceases to be mind-blowing!! But all I know of this person is only through the internet, and yet I feel so very at-home when talking to her. So isn’t it me who is talking to her? Or is it not her who is talking to me all the time! And this is how horcruxes are supposed to work... preserve life across the unknown. OK, the horcrux in the book preserves life, but these online horcruxes preserve the personality. As I had written in my other post, what any person writes is what the person likes to read, the person himself/herself. Mails/chats might be the way we preserve ourselves in these horcruxes! :P Some idea!

ps: sorry, those who aint Harry Potter fans, if you dint got head or tail of the post!

Holocaust II / WW III ... ?

The Hindu came out with this article in yesterday’s issue. To say the least, it astounded me! What arrogance! How impudent on America’s part? As per the article, "There is only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option and that is a nuclear-armed Iran,'' said Senator John McCain, a likely Republican contender for the presidency in 2008.
So America will never stop lording over the Middle East/world? Yes WTC was brought down. But how does Iran’s plans directly affect the US? Bush’s deceleration ‘This is WAR’ was against the Afghans supposedly, right? Then where did Iran come into the picture now? I am not talking like I don’t know how it all has been going. But here I am trying to step back and think in the ‘history’ angle. If someone from the future were to read newspapers from around 9/11’s time, with knowledge of the American superpower status, I guess it will show starkly that the world was taken on a ‘terror’ ride by the US… and whatever ‘threat’ was posed by Afghan, Iraq or Iran was as empty as the famous and never found “WMD”.

OK my point is, if Osama was earlier trained by the US for operations against Russia and he gave back some medicine to US when he thought what they were propagating against his religion was wrong, how does it become entirely wrong on Osama’s part alone. Isn’t the big question these days – ‘Who is a bigger terrorist Osama or Bush? – correct in context?

Another interview of Ziauddin Sardar in yesterday’s paper gave a very good insight. About Islam he says – ‘Scholars and thinkers have been suggesting for well over a century that we need to make a serious attempt at ijtihad, at reasoned struggle and rethinking, to reform Islam. Reform, in my opinion, is long overdue. It is time we made serious attempts to rethink Islam in contemporary terms.’ But he also says – ‘The cartoons are not about freedom of expression; they are all about naked use of power and demonisation. They are not just maligning the Prophet; they are saying that he was intrinsically violent, that the creed he preached is violent, and hence all those who follow him are violent. In other words, Muslims are inherently violent and evil. No culture or people can tolerate such a level of demonisation. Last time, Europe demonised a people to this extent we ended up with the Holocaust. As far as I am concerned, these cartoons are a reflection of racism and Islamophobia that is now running rampant in Europe.’
It rang very true to me! What if 10 years from now newspapers start categorizing this decade as the decade of WW III!?? Lets say it all started with 9/11 attacks because the ‘Gulf War’ is a separate entity in the relative past. So the US declares WAR on Afghan. Next, with false allegation and ‘manufactured’ reports descends its troops in Iraq soil. Gets it hand on all the oil it wants and is still not satisfied. It tells the world that Iran is dangerous if it can have nuclear weapons [as if the US alone is not!!!] and goes on to bunker-bomb the nuclear facilities, in the process razing out Iran too.

Here, I am going to imagine more… to make things more dramatic. Let’s say China springs a surprise on the US coming out in support of some Middle East country [this event is not totally ruled out even in today’s world]. And Russia [it is already inviting Hamas leaders to Moscow] takes a stand against the US too. And now, the US is all too much into this to step back and prevent another catastrophe. WW III flares around the world - Holocaust is here! It results in a catastrophe never known in human history. It makes WW II look like it was not a ‘major’ war as this one!!

Can this be stopped? If it can be, it has to be done NOW! Bush’s second term is getting worse for him by the day! And I don’t really know if a President can be impeached because he took his nation to an unwanted war! And he has 2 more years to stay in power, including 2006. It boggles my mind to think of the possibilities! And all this has the potential to have really far reaching consequences. Can and will the Americans stop Bush from taking the world on a terror ride? Guys sitting out there in the US, you people are placed in the inside of the place I am talking about. Can you give at least a fair picture of how things might go on, from here? Bala… here’s your favorite topic. Give me a big comment here!

A good story...

After browsing through a few blog entries such as this and this, I was wondering how indeed we have lost the art of story telling. As the ‘lazygeek’ pointed out in his blog, when Kamal said we have lost the art of script writing I really believed it was true. My guess is any movie … ANY... is as good as its script. And I just watched Fight Club [the Edward Norton one]… so there you have proof how the script can work wonders. Its all there in the head, just a bit of imagination is needed. Movies are such a vast canvas and you can tell the story however you want it and the audience is ‘mould-able’ into a mood. And this mood can be generated only with a good script. Even Rang De Basanti works for me ‘cos it has a neat script, the juxtaposing of sepia and color was good technicality too!

But this post is about my reminiscences of my college days where I was the sole narrator of vivid tales to the, nay I call, ‘pattikaataans’!! What I mean to say is, I was the city guy in the whole floor of the polytechnic hostel and we had a good 12-15 guys [the pattikaataans you see] sitting around me, after dinner, listening to my narration of ‘ID-4’ and ‘The Rock’. I was just out of school then and I am still not able to understand how I really ‘narrated’ the story of ‘Matrix’ to 2 unlucky guys! A funny anecdote is that one of the guys went home one of the weekends and happened to be watching a movie on HBO. Most of the movie got over but the poor guy had missed the initial titles and dint have a clue which movie he was watching. But towards end of the movie, a guy standing on an island lights up two flashlights and waves it at an incoming aircraft. It was at that instant when it hit my happy friend that this was the story I was narrating the week before! He knew he was watching ‘The Rock’ and this friend still attributes it to my very theatrical narration of stories that makes him like even drab movies, ‘The Mexican’ for instance. He watched it just because I said it was good and dint like it one bit. But I did, maybe ‘cos I liked Brad and Julia in it.

Anything given a twist and an angle always interests the listener/reader. Such as one of my posts did, I should guess! So narrating and listening to stories is important. And it is more important that such ‘paati kathaikal’ are narrated to every kid, ‘cos I have vivid memory of how I staggered at the immense nature of the ‘Viswa Roobam’ on screen, watching the Mahabaratha as a tiny tot. And I believe each kid should experience that. My friend and I could only feel sad about how kids these days did not have a ‘Stone Boy’ or a ‘Circus’ or even ‘Potli Baba’ to watch on TV. All that has been raided by ‘The Mask’ and ‘Jack the Samurai’ and ‘Jonny Bravo’ that give instant laughs like the fast food, but the taste never lingers on as it does with watching a ‘Bhishma Maharaj’ or ‘Kroor Singh’ for that matter! We really need to get back our story telling ways!

Is this prejudice?

I am just going to plainly state what I think. I thought maybe it might sound prejudiced, but its each to his own.

There was no Aryan invasion. And the Vedic Indian society that existed before that was the best. The one where there were only four divisions in society. And a theory to back that, which says the Brahman comes from the Head of God [hence the intellect and responsibility to perform yagnyas for the sake of others]; the Kshatriya comes from the ‘Bhuja’s (shoulders)of God [hence the power to fight and protect one’s country]; The Vaishya comes from the thighs of God [hence the ability to travels the world for trade leading to prosperity]; the Shoodhra comes from the feet of the God [hence the ability to serve others].

The point here is, each person born is born into one of these four realms and each one does what one does best. And so each should pursue what will come to him naturally which will just go on to enable the society prosper as a whole. Guess Adam smith said something on these lines. As in the movie Beautiful Mind, Nash says – ‘Adam Smith was incomplete when he said – everyone in the group would pursue his best interests for the group to prosper.’ Nash corrects it by saying – ‘each in a group should do what is best for him and the group for the group to prosper.’ This basis of group theory is what I guess needs to prevail in any society for overall progress. How this can happen and when, I have no clue. But I know we, in our pursuit for the perfect society, will need to reach there!

oru lady's finger-in nagam!

naan avalin nagam pole...

aval vetti vida vida.. meendum mulaippen !

aval ariyaamal avalukku uridhi alippen !!

enna irunthaalum, naan illaamal aval illai !!!




rough translation:

I am like her finger nail...

every time she cuts me off, i will rise again !

without her knowledge, i will give her strength/support !!

anyways, she aint she without me !!!


[situation: this post was a sudden inspiration in the morning, when i was cutting my nails! :)]