the last time i saw her - she was wearing a yellow salwar suit. it was an exam and she was seated a couple of benches ahead of me. I didnt even get a good look at her face.
Then 3 years later, i got hold of her email id. Actually, i was searching for it & when i saw one of the search results, i knew it was hers. I mailed asking if it was she. No prizes for guessing what the reply was. Of course, it was she.
And they said that love was blind. Huh - love can see beyond a million email ids, at least.
Aneways, a couple of mails later, it was clear that my mailing her any more will only be a nuisance to her. So, I stopped.
Fast forward to today, I saw her photo on orkut. One out of many profiles with the same name. You know, I hadnt seen her for five years, completely forgotten what she looked like (or so I thought)but one pic was enough to tell me that this was her.
Again, who said love was blind?? Love makes u spot out a face from a million. Its definitely not blind.
Coming back to our story, as luck would have it, I found she was committed. And, like the last time I left her alone.
Let me tell you, i wont ever doubt this decision. And I am happy with the memories;
the memory of her cute face
the memory of how cute she looked in her bubbly dresses
the memory of the skipped heartbeat i had today when i saw her photo
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
DR. APJ Abdul Kalaam's speech in Hyderabad
First read the speech (do read it carefully and completely, pls)
"I have three visions for India.
In 3000 years of our history, people from all over the world have come and invaded us, captured our lands, conquered our minds. From Alexander onwards. The Greeks, the Turks, the Moguls, the Portuguese, the British, the French, the Dutch, all of them came and looted us, took over what was ours. Yet we have not done this to any other nation. We have not conquered anyone.
We have not grabbed their land, their culture, their history and tried to enforce our way of life on them. Why? Because we respect the freedom of others. That is why my first vision is that of FREEDOM. I believe that India got its first vision of this in 1857, when we started the war of independence. It is this freedom that we must protect and nurture and build on. If we are not free, no one will respect us.
My second vision for India is DEVELOPMENT. For fifty years we have been a developing nation. It is time we see ourselves as a developed nation.
We are among top 5 nations of the world in terms of GDP We have 10 percent growth rate in most areas. Our poverty levels are falling. Our achievements are being globally recognized today. Yet we lack the self-confidence to see ourselves as a developed
nation, self- reliant and self-assured. Isn't this incorrect?
I have a THIRD vision.
India must stand up to the world. Because I believe that, unless India stands up to the world, no one will respect us. Only strength respects strength. We must be strong not only as a military power but also as an economic power. Both must go hand-in-hand. My good fortune was to have worked with three great minds. Dr. Vikram Sarabhai of the Dept. of space, Professor Satish Dhawan, who succeeded him and Dr.Brahm Prakash, father of nuclear material. I was lucky to have worked with all three of them closely and consider this the great opportunity of my life.
I see four milestones in my career:
Twenty years I spent in ISRO. I was given the opportunity to be the project director for India's first satellite launch vehicle, SLV3. The one that launched Rohini. These years played a very important role in my life of Scientist.
After my ISRO years, I joined DRDO and got a chance to be the part of India's guided missile program. It was my second bliss when Agni met its mission requirements in 1994.
The Dept. of Atomic Energy and DRDO had this tremendous partnership in the recent nuclear tests, on May 11 and 13. This was the third bliss. The joy of participating with my team in these nuclear tests and proving to the world that India can make it, that we are no longer a developing nation but one of them. It made me feel very proud as an Indian. The fact that we have now developed for Agni a re-entry structure, for which we have developed this new material. A Very light material called carbon-carbon.
One day an orthopedic surgeon from Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences visited my laboratory. He lifted the material and found it so light that he took me to his hospital and showed me his patients. There were these little girls and boys with heavy metallic calipers weighing over three Kg. each, dragging their feet around.
He said to me: Please remove the pain of my patients.
In three weeks, we made these Floor reaction Orthosis 300-gram calipers and took them to the orthopedic center. The children didn't believe their eyes. >>From dragging around a three kg. load on their legs, they could now move around!
Their parents had tears in their eyes. That was my fourth bliss!
Why is the media here so negative? Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognize our own strengths, our achievements? We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them.
Why?
We are the first in milk production.
We are number one in Remote sensing satellites.
We are the second largest producer of wheat.
We are the second largest producer of rice.
Look at Dr. Sudarshan, he has transferred the tribal village into a self-sustaining, self driving unit. There are millions of such achievements but our media is only obsessed in the bad news and failures and disasters.
I was in Tel Aviv once and I was reading the Israeli newspaper. It was the day after a lot of attacks and bombardments and deaths had taken place. The Hamas had struck. But the front page of the newspaper had the picture of a Jewish gentleman who in five years had transformed his desert land into an orchid and a granary. It was this inspiring picture that everyone woke up to. The gory details of killings, bombardments, deaths, were inside in the newspaper, buried among other news.
In India we only read about death, sickness, terrorism, crime. Why are we so NEGATIVE?
Another question : Why are we, as a nation so obsessed with foreign things?
We want foreign TVs, we want foreign shirts. We want foreign technology. Why this obsession with everything imported. Do we not realize that self-respect comes with self-reliance?
I was in Hyderabad giving this lecture, when a 14 year old girl asked me for my autograph. I asked her what her goal in life is.
She replied: I want to live in a developed India.
For her, you and I will have to build this developed India. You must proclaim. India is not an under-developed nation; it is a highly developed nation.
Do you have 10 minutes? Allow me to come back with a vengeance.
Got 10 minutes for your country? If yes, then read; otherwise, choice is yours.
YOU say that our government is inefficient.
YOU say that our laws are too old.
YOU say that the municipality does not pick up the garbage.
YOU say that the phones don' t work, the railways are a joke, the airline is the worst in the world, mails never reach their destination.
YOU say that our country has been fed to the dogs and is the absolute pits.
YOU say, say and say.
What do YOU do about it?
Take a person on his way to Singapore..... Give him a name - YOURS. Give him a face - YOURS. YOU walk out of the airport and you are at your International best. In Singapore you don't throw cigarette butts on the roads or eat in the stores. YOU are as proud of their Underground links as they are. You pay $5 (approx. Rs.60) to drive through Orchard Road (equivalent of Mahim Causeway or Pedder Road) between 5 PM and 8 PM. YOU comeback to the parking lot to punch your parking ticket if you have over stayed in a restaurant or a shopping mall irrespective of your status identity. In Singapore you don't say anything, DO YOU? YOU wouldn't dare to eat in public during Ramadan, in Dubai. YOU would not dare to go out without your head covered in Jeddah. YOU would not dare to buy an employee of the telephone exchange in London at 10 pounds ( Rs.650) a month to, "see to it that my STD and ISD calls are billed to someone else." YOU would not dare to speed beyond 55 mph (88 km/h) in Washington and then tell the traffic cop, "Jaanta hai main kaun hoon (Do you know who I am?). I am so and so's son. Take your two bucks and get lost."
YOU wouldn't chuck an empty coconut shell anywhere other than the garbage pail on the beaches in Australia and New Zealand.
Why don't YOU spit Paan on the streets of Tokyo?
Why don't YOU use examination jockeys or buy fake certificates in Boston???
We are still talking of the same YOU.
YOU who can respect and conform to a foreign system in other countries but cannot in your own.
You who will throw papers and cigarettes on the road the moment you touch Indian ground. If you can be an involved and appreciative citizen in an alien country, why cannot you be the same here in India?
Once in an interview, the famous Ex-municipal commis sioner of Bombay, Mr.Tinaikar, had a point to make. "Rich people's dogs are walked on the streets to leave their affluent droppings all over the place," he said. "And then the same people turn around to criticize and blame the authorities for inefficiency and dirty pavements. What do they expect the officers to do? Go down with a broom every time their dog feels the pressure in his bowels?
In America every dog owner has to clean up after his pet has done the job. Same in Japan. Will the Indian citizen do that here?" He's right.
We go to the polls to choose a government and after that forfeit all responsibility. We sit back wanting to be pampered and expect the government to do everything for us whilst our contribution is totally negative. We expect the government to clean up but we are not going to stop chucking garbage all over the place nor are we going to stop to pick a up a stray piece of paper and throw it in the bin. We expect the railways to provide clean bathrooms but we are not going to learn the proper use of bathrooms.
We want Indian Airlines and Air India to provide the best of food and toiletries but we are not going to stop pilfering at the least opportunity. This applies even to the staff who is known not to pass on the service to the public. When it comes to burning social issues like those related to women, dowry, girl child and others, we make loud drawing room protestations and continue to do the reverse at home. Our excuse? "It's the whole system which has to change, how will it matter if I alone forego my sons' rights to a dowry." So who's going to change the system?
What does a system consist of? Very conveniently for us it consists of our neighbors, other households, other cities, other communities and the government. But definitely not me and YOU. When it comes to us actually making a positive contribution to the system we lock ourselves along with our families into a safe cocoon and look into the distance at countries far away and wait for a Mr. Clean to come along & work miracles for us with a majestic sweep of his hand or we leave the country and run away.
Like lazy cowards hounded by our fears we run to America to bask in their glory and praise their system. When New York becomes insecure we run to England. When England experiences unemployment, we take the next flight out to the Gulf. When the Gulf is war struck, we demand to be rescued and brought home by the Indian government. Everybody is out to abuse and rape the country. Nobody thinks of feeding the system. Our conscience is mortgaged to money.
Dear Indians, The article is highly thought inductive, calls for a great deal of introspection and pricks one's conscience too....I am echoing J.F.Kennedy's words to his fellow Americans to relate to Indians.....
"ASK WHAT WE CAN DO FOR INDIA AND DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE TO MAKE INDIA WHAT AMERICA AND OTHER WESTERN COUNTRIES ARE TODAY"
Lets do what India needs from us.
Forward this message to each Indian for a change instead of sending Jokes or junk mails.
Thank you,
Dr. Abdul Kalaam
(PRESIDENT OF INDIA)
This is one of the best lectures i have ever read or head.
When I was in the four bliss part, it seemed good but wasnt affecting me much. But when it came to that part where I am at Singapore, I started realizing. How true he is!!
I find myself guilty of the wrongs that he has described. How often do we change our behaviour depending on the surroundings - you are in a big posh shopping mall, you behave all nice and goody goody; move to the local neighbourhood bazar and think about your actions, you will understand Dr. Kalam's views.
Well, I am gonna do two things to start with. First, I am gonna change my behaviour like above; and second, I will refrain from using the words - pura system hi aisa hai. If there is something wrong, find out the person(s) accountable and blame them, not the whole system. And don't forget to take responsibility and contribute positively.
"I have three visions for India.
In 3000 years of our history, people from all over the world have come and invaded us, captured our lands, conquered our minds. From Alexander onwards. The Greeks, the Turks, the Moguls, the Portuguese, the British, the French, the Dutch, all of them came and looted us, took over what was ours. Yet we have not done this to any other nation. We have not conquered anyone.
We have not grabbed their land, their culture, their history and tried to enforce our way of life on them. Why? Because we respect the freedom of others. That is why my first vision is that of FREEDOM. I believe that India got its first vision of this in 1857, when we started the war of independence. It is this freedom that we must protect and nurture and build on. If we are not free, no one will respect us.
My second vision for India is DEVELOPMENT. For fifty years we have been a developing nation. It is time we see ourselves as a developed nation.
We are among top 5 nations of the world in terms of GDP We have 10 percent growth rate in most areas. Our poverty levels are falling. Our achievements are being globally recognized today. Yet we lack the self-confidence to see ourselves as a developed
nation, self- reliant and self-assured. Isn't this incorrect?
I have a THIRD vision.
India must stand up to the world. Because I believe that, unless India stands up to the world, no one will respect us. Only strength respects strength. We must be strong not only as a military power but also as an economic power. Both must go hand-in-hand. My good fortune was to have worked with three great minds. Dr. Vikram Sarabhai of the Dept. of space, Professor Satish Dhawan, who succeeded him and Dr.Brahm Prakash, father of nuclear material. I was lucky to have worked with all three of them closely and consider this the great opportunity of my life.
I see four milestones in my career:
Twenty years I spent in ISRO. I was given the opportunity to be the project director for India's first satellite launch vehicle, SLV3. The one that launched Rohini. These years played a very important role in my life of Scientist.
After my ISRO years, I joined DRDO and got a chance to be the part of India's guided missile program. It was my second bliss when Agni met its mission requirements in 1994.
The Dept. of Atomic Energy and DRDO had this tremendous partnership in the recent nuclear tests, on May 11 and 13. This was the third bliss. The joy of participating with my team in these nuclear tests and proving to the world that India can make it, that we are no longer a developing nation but one of them. It made me feel very proud as an Indian. The fact that we have now developed for Agni a re-entry structure, for which we have developed this new material. A Very light material called carbon-carbon.
One day an orthopedic surgeon from Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences visited my laboratory. He lifted the material and found it so light that he took me to his hospital and showed me his patients. There were these little girls and boys with heavy metallic calipers weighing over three Kg. each, dragging their feet around.
He said to me: Please remove the pain of my patients.
In three weeks, we made these Floor reaction Orthosis 300-gram calipers and took them to the orthopedic center. The children didn't believe their eyes. >>From dragging around a three kg. load on their legs, they could now move around!
Their parents had tears in their eyes. That was my fourth bliss!
Why is the media here so negative? Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognize our own strengths, our achievements? We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them.
Why?
We are the first in milk production.
We are number one in Remote sensing satellites.
We are the second largest producer of wheat.
We are the second largest producer of rice.
Look at Dr. Sudarshan, he has transferred the tribal village into a self-sustaining, self driving unit. There are millions of such achievements but our media is only obsessed in the bad news and failures and disasters.
I was in Tel Aviv once and I was reading the Israeli newspaper. It was the day after a lot of attacks and bombardments and deaths had taken place. The Hamas had struck. But the front page of the newspaper had the picture of a Jewish gentleman who in five years had transformed his desert land into an orchid and a granary. It was this inspiring picture that everyone woke up to. The gory details of killings, bombardments, deaths, were inside in the newspaper, buried among other news.
In India we only read about death, sickness, terrorism, crime. Why are we so NEGATIVE?
Another question : Why are we, as a nation so obsessed with foreign things?
We want foreign TVs, we want foreign shirts. We want foreign technology. Why this obsession with everything imported. Do we not realize that self-respect comes with self-reliance?
I was in Hyderabad giving this lecture, when a 14 year old girl asked me for my autograph. I asked her what her goal in life is.
She replied: I want to live in a developed India.
For her, you and I will have to build this developed India. You must proclaim. India is not an under-developed nation; it is a highly developed nation.
Do you have 10 minutes? Allow me to come back with a vengeance.
Got 10 minutes for your country? If yes, then read; otherwise, choice is yours.
YOU say that our government is inefficient.
YOU say that our laws are too old.
YOU say that the municipality does not pick up the garbage.
YOU say that the phones don' t work, the railways are a joke, the airline is the worst in the world, mails never reach their destination.
YOU say that our country has been fed to the dogs and is the absolute pits.
YOU say, say and say.
What do YOU do about it?
Take a person on his way to Singapore..... Give him a name - YOURS. Give him a face - YOURS. YOU walk out of the airport and you are at your International best. In Singapore you don't throw cigarette butts on the roads or eat in the stores. YOU are as proud of their Underground links as they are. You pay $5 (approx. Rs.60) to drive through Orchard Road (equivalent of Mahim Causeway or Pedder Road) between 5 PM and 8 PM. YOU comeback to the parking lot to punch your parking ticket if you have over stayed in a restaurant or a shopping mall irrespective of your status identity. In Singapore you don't say anything, DO YOU? YOU wouldn't dare to eat in public during Ramadan, in Dubai. YOU would not dare to go out without your head covered in Jeddah. YOU would not dare to buy an employee of the telephone exchange in London at 10 pounds ( Rs.650) a month to, "see to it that my STD and ISD calls are billed to someone else." YOU would not dare to speed beyond 55 mph (88 km/h) in Washington and then tell the traffic cop, "Jaanta hai main kaun hoon (Do you know who I am?). I am so and so's son. Take your two bucks and get lost."
YOU wouldn't chuck an empty coconut shell anywhere other than the garbage pail on the beaches in Australia and New Zealand.
Why don't YOU spit Paan on the streets of Tokyo?
Why don't YOU use examination jockeys or buy fake certificates in Boston???
We are still talking of the same YOU.
YOU who can respect and conform to a foreign system in other countries but cannot in your own.
You who will throw papers and cigarettes on the road the moment you touch Indian ground. If you can be an involved and appreciative citizen in an alien country, why cannot you be the same here in India?
Once in an interview, the famous Ex-municipal commis sioner of Bombay, Mr.Tinaikar, had a point to make. "Rich people's dogs are walked on the streets to leave their affluent droppings all over the place," he said. "And then the same people turn around to criticize and blame the authorities for inefficiency and dirty pavements. What do they expect the officers to do? Go down with a broom every time their dog feels the pressure in his bowels?
In America every dog owner has to clean up after his pet has done the job. Same in Japan. Will the Indian citizen do that here?" He's right.
We go to the polls to choose a government and after that forfeit all responsibility. We sit back wanting to be pampered and expect the government to do everything for us whilst our contribution is totally negative. We expect the government to clean up but we are not going to stop chucking garbage all over the place nor are we going to stop to pick a up a stray piece of paper and throw it in the bin. We expect the railways to provide clean bathrooms but we are not going to learn the proper use of bathrooms.
We want Indian Airlines and Air India to provide the best of food and toiletries but we are not going to stop pilfering at the least opportunity. This applies even to the staff who is known not to pass on the service to the public. When it comes to burning social issues like those related to women, dowry, girl child and others, we make loud drawing room protestations and continue to do the reverse at home. Our excuse? "It's the whole system which has to change, how will it matter if I alone forego my sons' rights to a dowry." So who's going to change the system?
What does a system consist of? Very conveniently for us it consists of our neighbors, other households, other cities, other communities and the government. But definitely not me and YOU. When it comes to us actually making a positive contribution to the system we lock ourselves along with our families into a safe cocoon and look into the distance at countries far away and wait for a Mr. Clean to come along & work miracles for us with a majestic sweep of his hand or we leave the country and run away.
Like lazy cowards hounded by our fears we run to America to bask in their glory and praise their system. When New York becomes insecure we run to England. When England experiences unemployment, we take the next flight out to the Gulf. When the Gulf is war struck, we demand to be rescued and brought home by the Indian government. Everybody is out to abuse and rape the country. Nobody thinks of feeding the system. Our conscience is mortgaged to money.
Dear Indians, The article is highly thought inductive, calls for a great deal of introspection and pricks one's conscience too....I am echoing J.F.Kennedy's words to his fellow Americans to relate to Indians.....
"ASK WHAT WE CAN DO FOR INDIA AND DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE TO MAKE INDIA WHAT AMERICA AND OTHER WESTERN COUNTRIES ARE TODAY"
Lets do what India needs from us.
Forward this message to each Indian for a change instead of sending Jokes or junk mails.
Thank you,
Dr. Abdul Kalaam
(PRESIDENT OF INDIA)
This is one of the best lectures i have ever read or head.
When I was in the four bliss part, it seemed good but wasnt affecting me much. But when it came to that part where I am at Singapore, I started realizing. How true he is!!
I find myself guilty of the wrongs that he has described. How often do we change our behaviour depending on the surroundings - you are in a big posh shopping mall, you behave all nice and goody goody; move to the local neighbourhood bazar and think about your actions, you will understand Dr. Kalam's views.
Well, I am gonna do two things to start with. First, I am gonna change my behaviour like above; and second, I will refrain from using the words - pura system hi aisa hai. If there is something wrong, find out the person(s) accountable and blame them, not the whole system. And don't forget to take responsibility and contribute positively.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
constitution vs parliament
learnt an interesting thing today about the Indian Constitution.
The Indian Constitution closely follows the the British Parliamentary model, but differs from it in one important respect that is, the Constitution is supreme, not the Parliament. So the Indian courts are vested with the authority to adjudicate on the constitutionality of any law passed by the Indian Parliament.
source: http://finance.indiamart.com/government_india/constitution/
i always thought that the parliament was the supereme thing, they passed a law and nobody could question that, except, of course, another session of the parliament. It feels good to know that the court can interfere in this regard. Thank goodness..and thank Ambedkar and team for ensuring this.
The Indian Constitution closely follows the the British Parliamentary model, but differs from it in one important respect that is, the Constitution is supreme, not the Parliament. So the Indian courts are vested with the authority to adjudicate on the constitutionality of any law passed by the Indian Parliament.
source: http://finance.indiamart.com/government_india/constitution/
i always thought that the parliament was the supereme thing, they passed a law and nobody could question that, except, of course, another session of the parliament. It feels good to know that the court can interfere in this regard. Thank goodness..and thank Ambedkar and team for ensuring this.
Friday, December 16, 2005
Wrongful Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake
read the article first
I wonder what is the reason behind such mistakes by one of the most advanced security organisations of the world. There are two possibilities which come into my mind: one that such things are inherent in the system and the so called war against terrorism, and the other that the people running such operations are more worried about getting results to show to their boss than really curbing the problem of terrorism.
I think its a mix of both. Like one example in the article says, one person was arrested because an al Qaida operative named him out of vendetta(apparently he was the al Qaida guy's prof and didn't give him good grades). Naturally, initially the CIA would apprehend the prof guy. But it gets bad when u keep him under custody for long without any real evidence.
Its an established principle that no matter how many criminals go scotfree but law should never punish an innocent. Some trouble to the innocent is necessary - an evil necessity of today's world. But care must be taken to prevent this. The priority of catching terrorists and that of not catching innocent men should be similar.
And this can be insured only when the top level people of such an organisation took steps accordingly. We cannot expect field operatives to take care of this.
So ultimately it boils down to the decision of the policy makers. What they need to understand is that , apart from facing the immediate scenario with the correct amount of gunpower, we need to take care that the hatred which leads to terrorism is removed. We need to remove terrorism and not terrorists. After all, by troubling innocent people we are creating more negativity than any positive results we expect.
I wonder what is the reason behind such mistakes by one of the most advanced security organisations of the world. There are two possibilities which come into my mind: one that such things are inherent in the system and the so called war against terrorism, and the other that the people running such operations are more worried about getting results to show to their boss than really curbing the problem of terrorism.
I think its a mix of both. Like one example in the article says, one person was arrested because an al Qaida operative named him out of vendetta(apparently he was the al Qaida guy's prof and didn't give him good grades). Naturally, initially the CIA would apprehend the prof guy. But it gets bad when u keep him under custody for long without any real evidence.
Its an established principle that no matter how many criminals go scotfree but law should never punish an innocent. Some trouble to the innocent is necessary - an evil necessity of today's world. But care must be taken to prevent this. The priority of catching terrorists and that of not catching innocent men should be similar.
And this can be insured only when the top level people of such an organisation took steps accordingly. We cannot expect field operatives to take care of this.
So ultimately it boils down to the decision of the policy makers. What they need to understand is that , apart from facing the immediate scenario with the correct amount of gunpower, we need to take care that the hatred which leads to terrorism is removed. We need to remove terrorism and not terrorists. After all, by troubling innocent people we are creating more negativity than any positive results we expect.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
sandy gets into ITC
well, the title of the post says it all. His interview was yesterday, as was five others'.All, except one, got placed.
A couple of days ago, i was telling shukla that he's gonna get through the interview. The guy really deserved it.
And then when we got the news yesterday, i was telling shukla, yaar is bande mein kuch to hai. aise dekho to koi difference nahi hai apne aur iske beech mein, but....
Well, we look for studs in kgp, one lives 2.5 metres from me. :D
talking of job scenario, TJ's got a ppo from TI. though he is still awaiting a formal letter, but i guess its for the better. It still gives him chance to try for other companies.
I have taken a very risky decision of going for only core EC companies. Sometimes, i really get scared. But then, okhal mein sir daal hi diya hai to musal se kya darna
Neeraj has said that from 21st onwards, he will wake up early and pray for us . well Neeraj u beeter remember that and bhagwan ji, please Neeraj ki sun lena.
A couple of days ago, i was telling shukla that he's gonna get through the interview. The guy really deserved it.
And then when we got the news yesterday, i was telling shukla, yaar is bande mein kuch to hai. aise dekho to koi difference nahi hai apne aur iske beech mein, but....
Well, we look for studs in kgp, one lives 2.5 metres from me. :D
talking of job scenario, TJ's got a ppo from TI. though he is still awaiting a formal letter, but i guess its for the better. It still gives him chance to try for other companies.
I have taken a very risky decision of going for only core EC companies. Sometimes, i really get scared. But then, okhal mein sir daal hi diya hai to musal se kya darna
Neeraj has said that from 21st onwards, he will wake up early and pray for us . well Neeraj u beeter remember that and bhagwan ji, please Neeraj ki sun lena.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
chhathh and our culture
Just went out of my room to go to the bathroom and heard chhathh songs floating in the air and pathakas being cracked. Its the final day of the festival when people offer prayers to sun god at dawn. I was flooded with the memories of my childhood when I used to visit my maternal grandparents' place or my aunt's place during chhathh. We used to go to the ghats on this morning and people would go knee deep in chilling water and pray for their sons/daughters to the sun god. pathake phodo , prasad khao...Man those were the days.
these are small bits of happiness which bind me to my place and these are why I intend to spend my life in India, close to where I belong.
these are small bits of happiness which bind me to my place and these are why I intend to spend my life in India, close to where I belong.
Monday, September 26, 2005
Schindler's List
Just saw this all time hit steven spielberg classic.
Its about a German factory owner who saves a large number of Jewish people from death during the Holocaust, based on Thomas Keneally’s book about Oskar Schindler. Released in 1993, this film won 7 academy awards, including Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Intending to profit from the war, Schindler (played by Liam Neeson) employs Jewish people at very low wages in his factory. When he realizes that his workers will be killed in a concentration camp, he takes drastic steps to save them all.
Its just mindblowing. We have read about the jewish camps in history. Here we see it. IMDB #6 in top 250.
This was the first WW2 movie i have seen. It makes me think about the basic values of life. I mean, here i am all comfortable , sitting in front of a PC writing this blog and there are people in this world suffering due to war, be it in iraq or israel or anywhere else. Its not that i dont have worries , but they are like what kind of a job i will get, how much it will pay. But these people live in a constant state of fear and uncertainty. Cast aside the problem of war ravaged people in far flung countries, there are people in my own country so poor, that they sell there children for money.
From one point of view, the easier one, i feel its their problem. Its not going to affect me , so why should I worry. But then my other half says - u call urself to be in the elite section of the society, and though it is rare, u feel pain when u see this suffering. So u need to do something about it.
This is what i am thinking - using my conscious brain and logic. But far below, in my heart, what troubles me most is how can people do such horrible things to fellow human beings - for that matter to any living being. Today i saw another movie, Matribhoomi. Its similar in the sense of people behaving like animals. These are deliberate acts, not hot blooded. And these were not committed in some barbarical past. They are true for today as well. How can one do so?
Signing off now, got a class at 9.30 .
Hats off to Mr Schindler. May u rest in peace.
Its about a German factory owner who saves a large number of Jewish people from death during the Holocaust, based on Thomas Keneally’s book about Oskar Schindler. Released in 1993, this film won 7 academy awards, including Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Intending to profit from the war, Schindler (played by Liam Neeson) employs Jewish people at very low wages in his factory. When he realizes that his workers will be killed in a concentration camp, he takes drastic steps to save them all.
Its just mindblowing. We have read about the jewish camps in history. Here we see it. IMDB #6 in top 250.
This was the first WW2 movie i have seen. It makes me think about the basic values of life. I mean, here i am all comfortable , sitting in front of a PC writing this blog and there are people in this world suffering due to war, be it in iraq or israel or anywhere else. Its not that i dont have worries , but they are like what kind of a job i will get, how much it will pay. But these people live in a constant state of fear and uncertainty. Cast aside the problem of war ravaged people in far flung countries, there are people in my own country so poor, that they sell there children for money.
From one point of view, the easier one, i feel its their problem. Its not going to affect me , so why should I worry. But then my other half says - u call urself to be in the elite section of the society, and though it is rare, u feel pain when u see this suffering. So u need to do something about it.
This is what i am thinking - using my conscious brain and logic. But far below, in my heart, what troubles me most is how can people do such horrible things to fellow human beings - for that matter to any living being. Today i saw another movie, Matribhoomi. Its similar in the sense of people behaving like animals. These are deliberate acts, not hot blooded. And these were not committed in some barbarical past. They are true for today as well. How can one do so?
Signing off now, got a class at 9.30 .
Hats off to Mr Schindler. May u rest in peace.
Friday, September 23, 2005
Steve Jobs at Stanford
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
Thats what i am doing, looking for what i love to do. Thanks to this speech, i now understand that its not easy to find it; but keep looking , u will get it.
And the death concept is awesome, got to try it.
Also what i have realised in past few days is that even if i am not doing the thing i like, i should keep doing it for some time, at least. Only then will i know if i really like it or not.I guess thats what he means by keep looking.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
Thats what i am doing, looking for what i love to do. Thanks to this speech, i now understand that its not easy to find it; but keep looking , u will get it.
And the death concept is awesome, got to try it.
Also what i have realised in past few days is that even if i am not doing the thing i like, i should keep doing it for some time, at least. Only then will i know if i really like it or not.I guess thats what he means by keep looking.
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Monday, June 13, 2005
The Weekend That Was
The weekend started early on Friday night. Me , Rachit n Raj Tilak went to see Mr & Mrs Smith. Romi, Amlan n Shandilya joined us at the multiplex. Expectations were high after seeing the trailors. But the movie was as bad as it can with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie firing off latest model guns like apna Sunny Deol. In fact, I liked his action in Gadar much more than this. Already having lost 80 bucks over the movie, we went home and found the auto driver asking for 1.5 times the meter fare. I had heard that this was a rule late in the night and didnt argue much.
Saturday was no better on account of wasting away on money. I paid 65 rupees for a journey in auto when i could have travelled the same distance in about 15. Aneways, this time it paid off and I got what I wanted.
I met Abhinav aka Rancho and Amit aka Mota and we came back to my place. Along with RTR we went out to take a stroll and for them a sutta break. There is a thater nearby . Its compound has a circular grass lawn and we decided to spend some time there. There was some show going on and we were made to believe that it was a Helen show. A gatekeeper offered to take us inside and get us front row seats for 150 rupees. Instead of availing of the offer, lawabiding that we are, we bought 4 tickets for 200(50 each)and went in. It turned out that it was a performance by some Manmouji orchestra headed by lead singer Medha Paranjpe. At first, it seemed these 200 rupees were also lost. But the orchestra was good as were the sound n lights. We really enjoyed it. Even Mota who was sulking at the beginning ended up watching the whole show.
On Sunday, we went to Singadh Fort. Not much of the original fort remains. But there were new buildings up there and quite a few communication towers. There was a bungalow owned by Bal Gangadhar Tilak in the past.
The whole place was quite large in area and I was a little surprised to find such a large, relatively flat, place on top of mountains. On the back side, there was even a small winding river, the view was just fabulous. The wind was cool and of course quite a few good looking girls were also there. The sunset view over the cliffs and the river in the valley....its a must visit if ever u r in Pune.
We had gone up in a jeep but while returning we decided to come back on foot on a different path. Its like a trek; and rtr and rancho were a little apprehensive with the sun already set. But me and mota managed to convince them and we started down. For sometime we were the only four people on the trek. The rural people used the path frequently to go up and there were a few huts on the way. When we were half way down, we met a couple who were also going down. They had already taken that path while going up(as they told us).
Then an interesting thing happened. We were a little ahead of them and went on to a different path. But they didnt try to correct us or call us to say that we were going in the wrong direction. Only when we saw them going a differnt way that we called them and they told us to follow them.
I could figure out only three possible explanations: either the path we had taken also lead to the village below or they were afraid of four boys in the deserted place or they were goons trying to trap us. But we believed and continued behind them. However, we were still thinking why had they behaved in such a manner.
But before long, we lost them and reached upon a pebbled path, which must have been a regular road in the past. We were relieved that we were in the right direction. But the worst was still to come.
Around 200 metres ahead we reached a flat space and felt that the road was going in the opposite direction. With almost no light and only a feeble torch in my Nokia 1100, we looked for another path. And then we made our worst mistake.
Instead of trying to find a path to the village, we started trying to find a path to a building which was nearer and had lights on. We backtracked, we went in all possible directions but couldnt find any way. Thankfully, during all this we had not lost sight of the village and the pebbled road. It seemed we would have to spend the night there. But we still continued to search for a way to the building. After many attempts and 45 minutes we realised, the building was on a different cliff and we decided to come back to where we had left the pebbled path. We thought of following it a little more.
And only 10 meters ahead from where we had left it , the road turned back to the village and we could see the lights. I cant tell how relieved we were. 5 minutes later we were in the village and on our way back to Pune.
Its a different thing that once we were safely in the village, rancho and rtr started crying and swearing over our decision to come down on foot. But who cares, we had enjoyed ourselves and had an adventure and we made it.
Later in the night mota and rancho left for Ahmad Nagar. I may be visiting Ahmad nagar this weekend for rancho's treat if his brother clears jee. Lets hope and pray.
Saturday was no better on account of wasting away on money. I paid 65 rupees for a journey in auto when i could have travelled the same distance in about 15. Aneways, this time it paid off and I got what I wanted.
I met Abhinav aka Rancho and Amit aka Mota and we came back to my place. Along with RTR we went out to take a stroll and for them a sutta break. There is a thater nearby . Its compound has a circular grass lawn and we decided to spend some time there. There was some show going on and we were made to believe that it was a Helen show. A gatekeeper offered to take us inside and get us front row seats for 150 rupees. Instead of availing of the offer, lawabiding that we are, we bought 4 tickets for 200(50 each)and went in. It turned out that it was a performance by some Manmouji orchestra headed by lead singer Medha Paranjpe. At first, it seemed these 200 rupees were also lost. But the orchestra was good as were the sound n lights. We really enjoyed it. Even Mota who was sulking at the beginning ended up watching the whole show.
On Sunday, we went to Singadh Fort. Not much of the original fort remains. But there were new buildings up there and quite a few communication towers. There was a bungalow owned by Bal Gangadhar Tilak in the past.
The whole place was quite large in area and I was a little surprised to find such a large, relatively flat, place on top of mountains. On the back side, there was even a small winding river, the view was just fabulous. The wind was cool and of course quite a few good looking girls were also there. The sunset view over the cliffs and the river in the valley....its a must visit if ever u r in Pune.
We had gone up in a jeep but while returning we decided to come back on foot on a different path. Its like a trek; and rtr and rancho were a little apprehensive with the sun already set. But me and mota managed to convince them and we started down. For sometime we were the only four people on the trek. The rural people used the path frequently to go up and there were a few huts on the way. When we were half way down, we met a couple who were also going down. They had already taken that path while going up(as they told us).
Then an interesting thing happened. We were a little ahead of them and went on to a different path. But they didnt try to correct us or call us to say that we were going in the wrong direction. Only when we saw them going a differnt way that we called them and they told us to follow them.
I could figure out only three possible explanations: either the path we had taken also lead to the village below or they were afraid of four boys in the deserted place or they were goons trying to trap us. But we believed and continued behind them. However, we were still thinking why had they behaved in such a manner.
But before long, we lost them and reached upon a pebbled path, which must have been a regular road in the past. We were relieved that we were in the right direction. But the worst was still to come.
Around 200 metres ahead we reached a flat space and felt that the road was going in the opposite direction. With almost no light and only a feeble torch in my Nokia 1100, we looked for another path. And then we made our worst mistake.
Instead of trying to find a path to the village, we started trying to find a path to a building which was nearer and had lights on. We backtracked, we went in all possible directions but couldnt find any way. Thankfully, during all this we had not lost sight of the village and the pebbled road. It seemed we would have to spend the night there. But we still continued to search for a way to the building. After many attempts and 45 minutes we realised, the building was on a different cliff and we decided to come back to where we had left the pebbled path. We thought of following it a little more.
And only 10 meters ahead from where we had left it , the road turned back to the village and we could see the lights. I cant tell how relieved we were. 5 minutes later we were in the village and on our way back to Pune.
Its a different thing that once we were safely in the village, rancho and rtr started crying and swearing over our decision to come down on foot. But who cares, we had enjoyed ourselves and had an adventure and we made it.
Later in the night mota and rancho left for Ahmad Nagar. I may be visiting Ahmad nagar this weekend for rancho's treat if his brother clears jee. Lets hope and pray.
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Miss Marple Omnibus & Doctors!!!!
I am sure you will not be able to understand the title of this blog if you are not an avid reader of fictions.
Well, to clear your doubts, Miss Marple Omnibus is a collection of the 12 murder mystery novels written by Agatha Christie, with an old spinster Miss Marple playing Sherlock Holmes. I finished reading these novels 2 or 3 days ago. They were , though not as captivating as Holmes in the beginning of the story, quite fantastic. In fact, I felt, sometimes, the climax was outstanding. You need some patience to go through the initial chitter-chatter but as the story moves on, you find yourself unable to leave the book.
One thing to note is that all the stories are murder mysteries. In fact, in one story, our heroine probes into a murder which was committed 18 years ago!!! In most of the cases, as is usual, one cant guess who is the murderer until one reaches the climax where our lady Miss Jane Marple finally decides to lend voice to her suspicions.
For me, the best of the twelve stories was Nemesis, the last story of the series (though not the last published one). In this adventure Miss Marple is set on a mission in which she doesn't know anything about her goal, but can only expect instructions from a man who is already dead. but had made arrangements for the instructions to reach her before his death. For a very short version of the story, one may go here: http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3256
Now, on to Doctors. This is a novel by Eric Segal, which I am currently reading. This is about the lives of two doctors, their journey from innocent childhood to becoming doctors to being doctors.... It is about the pain a doctor goes through; the pain of seeing pain and suffering around him, the pain of loosing a patient, the pain of having to choose between his family and his profession. And this is shown through the lives of the protagonists Laura and Barney and the characters around them. This book promises to be a good read.
I am writing this from my office , where I have come on a Saturday because I was alone at my room, having nothing to do (one cant always read novels, they have a tendency to get on one's mind). Today's plan is to be at the office till the evening and then go to watch Star Wars 3. That's all for today. Its lunch time now!!!
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
last weekend
the weekend started on friday evening . met shanku n neeraj who had come down from bombay. we went to see Naina(which was released that day only), the latest Ram Gopal Verma movie. The first half was quite captivating and it raised our expectations . However, post interval the movie lost it completely. But it was not a complete waste of 70 bucks. After coming out of the multioplex we decided or rather confirmed our decision of going to shrdi on saturday night.
in the meanwhile , frustated with bsnl service, i decided to buy a new sim card and took idea's. And now i am left with two sim cards with none working.
Aneways, we reached Shirdi on Sunday morning. Rancho and Mota were already there waiting for us. After washing up, the next stop was Sai Mandir. As soon as we reached the temple , a couple of people started to request us to keep our footwear with them. After tryin our best to brush them off, we decide it was of no use and finally agreed to their 'requests'.After buying some prasad from them(i hope u didnt expect they were keeping our shoes for charity) we entered he temple. It took us quite sometime to figure out where to go for darshan and all. An elderly uncle helped us and we began on our expedition of two darshans. First was soon over. Then the search for the start of the second queue took us around five minutes. It was sooooooooo long that it took us more than an hour to finally come to the worshipping place.But the hard work was worth it.
Next stop was Shani Singnapur where we heard there were no thefts, which was disproved by an experience one of my friends , who was there on the same day, had. But leave alone theft , there was daylight robbery. The shopkeepers robbed us of 100 bucks for pooja material which would not have cost them more than 25-30 rupees. And then we had to go to the temple with only a towel on---no comments----. and the road was so hot , it burnt our feet. I had to make a choice between running to a cooler place or holding my towel in place and walk with my feet burning. I took the second choice, of course.
Finally, after all this we returned back to Shirdi and after lunch started discussing whether we should go to Trayambakeshwar or not and it yes hen how. This discussion took us around two hours and it was now 5 o'clock wheh we learnt that the temple is closed at 5.30.
Finally, exhausted with the day, we started our way back, me to Pune, Shanku and Neeraj to Mumbai and Mota n Rancho to Ahmed Nagar.
in the meanwhile , frustated with bsnl service, i decided to buy a new sim card and took idea's. And now i am left with two sim cards with none working.
Aneways, we reached Shirdi on Sunday morning. Rancho and Mota were already there waiting for us. After washing up, the next stop was Sai Mandir. As soon as we reached the temple , a couple of people started to request us to keep our footwear with them. After tryin our best to brush them off, we decide it was of no use and finally agreed to their 'requests'.After buying some prasad from them(i hope u didnt expect they were keeping our shoes for charity) we entered he temple. It took us quite sometime to figure out where to go for darshan and all. An elderly uncle helped us and we began on our expedition of two darshans. First was soon over. Then the search for the start of the second queue took us around five minutes. It was sooooooooo long that it took us more than an hour to finally come to the worshipping place.But the hard work was worth it.
Next stop was Shani Singnapur where we heard there were no thefts, which was disproved by an experience one of my friends , who was there on the same day, had. But leave alone theft , there was daylight robbery. The shopkeepers robbed us of 100 bucks for pooja material which would not have cost them more than 25-30 rupees. And then we had to go to the temple with only a towel on---no comments----. and the road was so hot , it burnt our feet. I had to make a choice between running to a cooler place or holding my towel in place and walk with my feet burning. I took the second choice, of course.
Finally, after all this we returned back to Shirdi and after lunch started discussing whether we should go to Trayambakeshwar or not and it yes hen how. This discussion took us around two hours and it was now 5 o'clock wheh we learnt that the temple is closed at 5.30.
Finally, exhausted with the day, we started our way back, me to Pune, Shanku and Neeraj to Mumbai and Mota n Rancho to Ahmed Nagar.
Monday, January 17, 2005
Seems I will be writing more
Just checked my blog page and found someone else too checked my blog. That gives me an incentive to keep blogging.
But for now, good night.
But for now, good night.
Back
Finally, i am back after a long time. I have thought about blogging so many times in this period but never get the time, or simply put i am too lazy. Lets see if I can do blog at a better rate this time.
I have got 32 contact hours this semester and if you dont have an idea...that is a lot. So I suppose, it wont be a surprise if i dont find myself here for another month. Aneways, it doesn't matter because I think the only person ever to read my first blog was KK, due to whom I wrote it; and by now he would also have forgotten that I have a blog. So, I don't expect anybody to read this edition of ravishtimes.
Got to wake up in the morning; so bbye.
I have got 32 contact hours this semester and if you dont have an idea...that is a lot. So I suppose, it wont be a surprise if i dont find myself here for another month. Aneways, it doesn't matter because I think the only person ever to read my first blog was KK, due to whom I wrote it; and by now he would also have forgotten that I have a blog. So, I don't expect anybody to read this edition of ravishtimes.
Got to wake up in the morning; so bbye.
Thursday, September 23, 2004
why and how am i here
hmmm....i really wonder how ypager.exe (that is yahoo messenger for the ignorants) affects our life. apart frm the chat...wht are interseting are the forwards (alas now most of them r frustrating). but the status messages r far more interesting. and it is onje such status message which brings me here.
today i finished my mid sem papers and was sitting on the comp not really sure wht to do and then i see KK's status message which ends my quest. and here i am blogging for the first time.
well, usually the weekend after the exams r supposed to be peaceful....but not this time...got many things to do and two important deadlines to meet...phew!!! lets see if i do it or just maaro peace as usual
today i finished my mid sem papers and was sitting on the comp not really sure wht to do and then i see KK's status message which ends my quest. and here i am blogging for the first time.
well, usually the weekend after the exams r supposed to be peaceful....but not this time...got many things to do and two important deadlines to meet...phew!!! lets see if i do it or just maaro peace as usual
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