Heady Concoctions

The one thing thats been eating up my mind for a long time now is the fact that i dont seem to have a life anymore. My day starts and ends with work… rather going to work. A few years ago i would’nt have dreamt that i, of all people, would go to work on a holiday! But sadly its happening Its amazing how we are sucked into this quagmire that is corporate life(or lack of life). It starts off slowly with a saturday at work and then slowly a sunday too and after 1 month you end up spending your weekdays, weekends and all holidays at work! Hell i’ve seen a few people who come to office on holidays because they cant visualize life without those cubicles.
I always believed that all those articles and stories about people burning out and stressing themselves out were exaggerated.. but after a few weeks of corporate life i can already see a few on the spiral path to burn out. I now truly understand why people flock to yoga and all sorts of spiritual stuff to rejuvenate themselves. I’ve realized that living in a cubicle can really screw around with your mind.
A few days back, Amma was in Chennai and i was showing her my apartment. The moment she went to our balcony the first thing she noticed was a nest on the tree. This particular nest was hardly 10 mts from the balcony but i had never noticed it until she showed it to me. I had however always noticed the large grandstand of the Madras Race Course whenever i went to the balcony. This might not mean anything to most people but it saddens me. To me it means that i’ve lost the habit of noticing the small things in life. Sadly we need grand and large artificial structures to arrest our mind. A small and delicate thing like a nest isnt good enough for us. All this reminded of a poem from my school days. This poem called “Leisure” captures my state of mind.
Leisure by W H Davies
What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. No time to stand beneath the boughs And stare as long as sheep or cows. No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass. No time to see, in broad daylight, Streams full of stars like skies at night. No time to turn at Beauty’s glance, And watch her feet, how they can dance. No time to wait till her mouth can Enrich that smile her eyes began. A poor life this if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.

Since moving to chennai i havent really done any travelling apart from the lone weekend that i was in kerala. Kerala is a place i would love to go to anyday, but never live for more than a week.
Back in school, going to Kerala was a yearly pilgrimage for me. Every summer i had to pack my bags and leave for a month to the green paradise of india. Paradise it was.. but for a week. After a week with hardly anyone of my generation to give me company, i wandered endlessly in the fields catching dragonfly’s and erthworms and chasing birds. I resembled a cow set out to graze in the fields! The major problem was that everyone around had some work or chores to do. From milking the cows to cracking open coconuts. From mending the fields to catching the hens! Everyone except me had work.Added to this i had to live in a village which had no TV till 5 years ago and no cable tv till last year! The place was so quiet i could hear my own breadth.. if the crickets would shut up.
But this visit was a lot different. I was there for exactly 30 hours and i had only enough time to meet my grandparents and to savour tasty home cooked food. In fact i was longing for more time to spend there. My grandparets are 80+ to 90+ years old and though they suffer from the effects of old age they do their own chores. Puts me to shame. Seeing them live their life i wonder why we live in such dense concrete jungles when all we are doing is getting sicker by the day. Kerala, even today is so pristinely beautiful and clean … i wonder how wondeful it was when they were in their prime. They live to such ripe old ages because they live a clean life. I guess the average life expectancy of the vilages in kerala must be around 80+. And that too without access to proper medial care! Now i long for those same summers that i spent hating the place.
A lot of funny incidents are happening lately. I’ll one day devote an entire post to them. But for now savour this. With Hutch giving away free SMS i was tempted to use it to the maximum. So one fine day i hammered the inboxes of a few friends with lots of messages. Pissed of at my spamming one of them complained that what i was doing was “Network Abuse”. And that prompted this reply “Network ab use ho raha hai, abuse nahin.”

Chennai - The moment i alighted from the train i felt that i belonged here. There was something special about the place and i could sense it. I had been to Chennai many times before but this time the air around me was different. This time it was the sweet smell of expectancy.
I immediately recalled the last time i sensed something similar. It was 4 years ago that, on a similar day, i set foot in Hyderabad. From Vizag to Hyderabad and then to Chennai. I seem to be slowly but steadily climbing the “city ladder”. The rung from Vizag to Hyderabad was a big one for me. Vizag, though a bustling city in its own right,is by no means any comparison to Hyderabad. Hyderabad was big but not impersonal. There is a great culture to the city and the people. During the 4 wondeful years i spent there, i absorbed a little of it and enjoyed everything about it. Now its time for another rung. This one promises to be a much smaller step. Chennai and Hyderabad though poles apart have both won my heart.
There is something about the way a city wins you over. Hyderabad does that with its ancient laidback culture. The ‘chalta hai’ attitude is so pervasive that you will get swept away by procrastination even before you realize it. Chennai has its own style of doing it. Its people are intellectually stimulating while being dizzying fanatics. Its climate is pleasant and sultry at the same time. The roads appear wide sometime and like dingy lanes at times! Its a land of two faces and while you may love or hate it, you cant be indifferent towards it.
I have however come to love the culture of this place. One of the things very high up my wishlist is to learn tamil. Being born a malayali will certainly help but it seems a long time before i can really give the auto drivers here a piece of my mind in Tamil. I would love to use the slang like the way some of the guys here do. I am also amazed at the way the movies shape the colloquial language and the slang here. Thanks to a few really helpful colleagues i am making brisk progress in this regard and will one day be using “maccha” and “mapalai” very effectively.
Leaving behind friends, college and hyderabad was tough but Chennai promises to make up for it. Only time can tell if it can.

Logged onto 360 after i think 1 month. Found a whole lot of new features here! Been trying to write about the rapid changes going on but havent yet found the patience or the will to even try. Let me see if i make any headway in the days ahead.
For starters i’ve slowly growing a liking towards Chennai. Then there are the numerous stories and wonderful incidents to note down. Not to mention the loads of friends i am making! And most importantly the wonderful people i am living with. WIll have to write about all these… phew.
And finally I am changing the rules of my blog. Everything is allowed. Even names But no cribbing

Many things happening at the same time can really confuse you. As of now i am supposed to leave my dear college and my life of the past 4 years and move on to the professional phase of my life in 10 days time. I have a lot of packing to do. Lots of movies,music and series to copy and move around. Btw got a brand new hard-disk(160 gigs) a few days back. Added to these are the unending trips to library,labs and caretakers for the no-dues. As if these were not enough i also have a report to complete (ouch…dont get me started on that). I wonder how i cannot get confused with all this happening at the same time! Just writing about them seems to confuse me. Hope i finish all these tasks.I just found Graham Greene’s “Stamboul Train” among my books. Been a long time since i read that. I wonder what it is with books and trains. My first encounter with books(novels) was around trains. Every year during our annual vacation to Kerala i got to buy a few books for the train ride. This was the only way to keep me silent during the journey. Trust me, a kid can be quite a handful on a train if he is bored. And this yearly ritual continued till the books changed from Tinkle and Chacha Chaudhary to Enid Blyton and then to Sidney Sheldon. But i always felt a connection between trains and books. And i just remembered that my last book from IIIT’s library was Anita Nair’s “Ladies Coupe”. Hmm..there is something worth exploring here. But i better get back to more pressing issues. After all i have a lot of things to do.*Witty incident*This particular incident happened in Vizag. A friend who had come down to Vizag and was experiencing the humid climate for the first time remarked how different it was from Hyderabad’s climate. And i instantly quipped “Yes, Its a sea change from Hyderabad!”

Disclaimer : The following entry isnt something i am proud of but I would like to one day read this and experience what it feels to be a child again.

The ingredients for a heady mixture of adolescent fun:
4 men whos have read a lot of comics and who refuse to grow up
Non-sense of humour
2 tablespoons of salt or sugar for taste

The following Superheroes/supervillains and their superpowers are the product of the above recipe. The concept is still under development but comments and suggestions are welcome.

Sulphur Man - Can throw sulphur all around. No one knows what throwing sulphur around can can do but who cares!

Kracker Kid - He is the quintessential geek. Can hack into anything connected by a wire, even ur mom’s clothesline! Voted “GEEK GOD” by the Cheek! magazine for the last 99999999 years(looks like he hacked their server too :P). He lives by the name “Biscuit Boy” in real life.

Narcissist Nazi - The villian. He has absolutely no powers. He is paralysed and cant move. He has no evil designs but our superheroes kick his ass anyway!
His Aides :
**** Boy - information censored
***** Girl - information censored

More Superheroes :
*Man(Read as STAR MAN) - He can replace anything. For ex. if he wants to become the wind he has to substitute “wind” in place of the *. He can also have multiple substitutions. Knowledge of ToC recommended for easy comprehension.
.Man(Read as DOT MAN) - Similar in super powers to *Man but can only substitute 1 thing at a time. Possible sidekick to *Man

A few more characters were also designed but i’ll write about them when their roles are clearly defined. These characters were conceived in a cave(reason for cave-man kind of intelligence) by four of us. We were trying to make a list of hitherto unheard of superheroes and these were what we came up with!

I still remember the day we took a cable TV connection at home. This was around November 1994. The very first program i watched on that fateful sunday was a race. A race in which i had no idea who was racing whom or where it was being held or for that matter what it was called! But i still remember being mesmerized by the images on the TV. I still remember an incident(a collision) between two drivers which the commentators kept discussing for the whole race and even after the race. And amazingly after the race they declared that the World Champion was someone called “Michael Schumacher”.
I vividly remember being dumbfounded on how someone who crashed out of the race could be the champion! But i was hooked to the spectacle though frankly, i did not understand anything. But i vowed to switch to prime-sports every sunday and watch every race from then on. But unfortunately the races never happened! I was in total confused but i craved for the races like a child for candy. After 4 months, finally in the March of 1995, i chanced upon a preview show of the races which explained the whole concept of Formula 1 and ran a small feature on each driver. Everything fell in place and i’ve been a F1 fanatic since then. I still root for Schumacher though he isnt the same force that he was for the last 5 seasons. How great men fall and yet how they remain immortal is for another post.
Here is more information on the first race i saw: http://www.grandprix.com/gpe/rr564.html

This time its two of my original quotes and not any incident. They are the result of fleeting moments of enlightenment.
“If work is worship then I am an atheist”
“You cannot argue with people in love for love is not driven by reason”

Finally I rode a bike on for more than 2 km’s. This may seem farfetched but i am scared of two-wheelers. Might be because i’ve been brought up in an environment that systematically induced a fear of twowheelers in me. My mothers twin brother was killed in a two-wheeler accident in Bombay when he was just 20 odd. Then my mothers younger brother also had a major accident on a bullet and was almost paralyzed. He was bedridden for about a year. These two major incidents have convinced my mother that riding a bike is as good as inviting death. So my upbringing was severely biased against bikes. Even now if i tell me mother that i rode a bike she will freeak out. I still remember how i had to plead to get my first bicycle and how my mother cried when i told her i had ventured out onto the roads with traffic on my tiny bicycle.

I know that riding isnt the hardest thing to do. In fact i do understand that once you get the hang of it, its as instinctive as pulling your hand out of a hot stove. But i think i did pretty well. I did have a little trouble with the gears and the accelerator but the fact that the bike was a splendor did help. And moreover riding at 4:00 AM when every goddamn road in the country is a freeway does help. The road from Hitec to Secret Lake is really good and with the cool breeze blowing in my face i felt that nothing could go wrong. Its a special feeling when you control something. It felt great. And all this time the Eagles were singing “On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair” in my head. One thing is for sure Riding and Music is a magical concoction. But that is for another day and another post.

Now for a witty line which probably says a lot about me. We were discussing our future when i innocently said that in case i ever was in a mangerial position in a game designing studio my designation would read “Manager cum Gamer”. Pat comes a comment: “No your designation would read Manager kam Gamer jyada“.

I sometimes get a feel of deja vu when i am watching a movie. Maybe that because i have seen so many movies that even if i am watching a movie for the second time I’ll not know it until i have watched a significant part of the show. But seriously speaking i have sometimes felt during many a conversation that i had talked to the same people about the very same things at the very same place at some some time in the past. Maybe there is a scientific explanation to this feeling. It has been said that deja vu is just an anomaly of memory. But the human subconscious is a great force and not to be underestimated. For that matter even our conscious mind hasnt been understood yet. I have tried doing that and have subsequently proposed a theory regarding the mind and minesweeper.

One of my all-time-favourite games is Minesweeper. I have been hooked to it since my summer in Samudra in 2002 I’ve made significant progress in improving my skills in it through practice. But at the same time i’ve also improved because of my theory about how the conscious mind influences this game. Minesweeper as you must know(if you dont pls find out by typing “winmine” in the run box if you are using windows.. sry i donno the command in linux) is about how fast you can think and click. So whatever processes that run in your mind will affect your performance in the game. After hours and probably days spent on this subject i’ve concluded that when you think about things as distant from minesweeper as possible during the game you tend to get better times in the game. Do try it out. I recommend counting numbers while playing the game. I had read somewhere that at any moment only about 25% of our brain is actually used! So counting numbers isnt going to really tax your brain. Whatever be the results for you my times have improved since i put my theory into practice. My best times are now 3(beginner), 23(intermediate) and 93(expert). There is no proof for my theory. You will have to take my word for it. (an unintentional pun :P)

I once read a nice little story in Tinkle(i was only 10 then :P). Its pretty much related to the mind and how we think. I feel i must share it with the world. Here is how it goes.

There was once a king(interesting that there is always a king in most stories) who was suffering from a grave ailment. His court physician could not cure this mysterious sickness. So the king sentenced the physician to the gallows. The physician(our hero) was a clever and intelligent young man who’s brain ran faster than a computer(oops wrong story :D). Our hero goes upto the king and tells him that he has a medicine that could cure him but it would work only on a condition. The medicine was to be taken continuously for 7 days but the condition was that at the time of dosage the king should not think of a “mango”. Everyday for seven days the king would come for the dosage. But the physician would remind him that he should’nt think of a mango. Automatically the king would think of a mango and at the end of seven days the physician had saved his head.

I now notice that my post is way too long and not even coherent. Probably this was written in a subconscious state! So i’ll end it here. “Only a diamond can cut a diamond”. A similar analogy exists. “Only a brain can understand a brain”

Yesterday i lost a dear friend. After a whole day of mourning i have finally gathered enough courage to write about the incident. It is particularly tough to write about this great loss to me because i was involved in the incident. In fact i was more than involved.. I was responsible for this tragedy. I am still recuperating from this shock and am still groping for answers.

For 2 whole years my friend was beside me for more time than anyone else. I spent my life, not just a lot of time, with my friend.. my mornings, afternoons, evenings and even my nights. It was more than a friendship to me. My friend was my guide, my philisopher, by beacon of light, my trusted companion through life. Hell, I even slept on my friend! A loss like this is particulary hard to bear and more so when you are reliving the incident for writing about it. But i’ll go through the pain again so that the reader will understand my plight.

Yesterday at around 6:00 AM after playing monopoly all night long i thought i would watch a movie. So i got the ambience ready, chose a good movie and clicked on play. It was at this exact moment that i lost my dearest friend. The chair i’ve been sitting on broke and down i fell on my bottom. The steel bar holding the seat had finally given in to the pressures that i put it to. I had finally broken a long lasting relationship. I LOVED my chair. It endured me for 2 whole years. I even moved it with me when i changed rooms. I think i slept on my chair more than on my bed. There have been innumerable instances when i fell into the arms of sleep in the cozy embrace of my chair. It has been there for me at all times, at my highs as well as my lows. There is something amiss in my room now. The void left by my chair will never be filled even if u get an exact copy of it. But life will go on.

All this reminds me of a line from one of my favourite movies - Fight Club. “The Things you own end up owning you”.

I miss my chair :((
Since i am still in mourning, i feel its not apt to write anything funny.