Away

Home sweet home. There is no place like home. Home is where the heart is. The heart knows not what it wants. The head is messing with the heart, the heart is playing with the head. The head wants to know what it wants. The heart won't let it decide. Bottleneck. Conflict. Frustration. Despair. Detachment. Delusion. Lost.

Mental block. Heaviness. Burden. Careless. Carefree. There just aren't enough adjectives and adverbs. Just blank somethings and punctuation marks. Where is the heart? At home. Where is home? A place where you want to be. In somebody's arms, with not a care about the world. In the depths of someone's eyes, wanting to drown, deeper. Running though a field of dreams, with green grass and blue skies, holding someone's hand. Away from everything else, everyone else. Except that someone.

Talk without talking. Walk miles without tiring. Keep looking at her without thinking, about anything. Just be. And feel the magic. Of being together. Forever. Until the clock runs out. And you wake up. And the dream has been taken away. Bringing you even closer. To the heart.

Back from the dead

Nearly five months! That is how long it took me to come back to my senses and write another post. The reasons for my absence are few and far-fetched, made-up even (read laziness and a general lack of blood flow to the thinking centers of the brain), so I will not delve into the cobwebbed corners of my cranium and indulge you in 'my crap'. Now, seeing as we have dealt with the elephant in the room, I request you to forget that this five month long hiatus really happened. *poof*

Like I said in the post about the Battle of the Serpentonian Sea-Lions and the Baboon battalions from Bluebumberg, it's all about making the right choices. But how do you know what the right choice is before facing the consequences? Put simply, you don't. The only thing that you know is which choice makes you happier at that point of time. OK, before this turns into a monologue by the Oracle/Architect, what I'm trying to establish is a firm ground for justifying the choices that I've made in the recent times.

I rank my decision-making capabilities second to the dog that was sent into space by the Russians. I suppose he was a smart dog, probably one of the smartest dogs they ever had, and he was trained well too. But once you go out into the endless vacuum of space, what kind of choices are there to make? Especially if you are a canine. Pretty ordinary ones I should guess. I'm good with those, but anything above that level it just goes downhill for me. And for people affected by those decisions. I'm really sorry all, as you can see I have confessed my sins. Regret the inconvenience.

Enough with the emo-psycho babble. Not much has changed in the past five months, not even the labels of my posts. But things are looking up (x fingers crossed x). Hopefully this is one of many more posts to follow soon.

High: Getting out of Mysore soon.

Low: Where did everybody go?

Points: 1000 points to this super-cool dad! The music gets another 1000 too.

Mini-Deadmau5 from Michael Cobra on Vimeo.

Love or Arranged?

It is the wedding season once again, this time more than ever. Me and my peer group are now in the eligible bachelors and bachelorettes zone and there is always talk of someone you know or someone you know only through someone else getting married. It's not even surprising anymore, the first two came as shocks I'll admit, but now we're used to it.

Without getting into the age old debate of love vs arranged form of marriage, I want to move on to something else which is equally important - what you love doing vs what you have to do. Some people are lucky enough to be working where they want to and doing what they enjoy most. I say lucky because they got the opportunity and pounced on it, some had the guts to take the risk, while there are some who made it happen for themselves. I have only admiration and jealousy for these people, wish I was among you.

A big part of getting there depends on knowing what you really really want to do. That is the first and most important step, which, being completely honest, I have not been able to do till date. To borrow from an old cliche, I'm still searching for my true calling, but, being completely honest again, I haven't been doing that either. Does that suck or what!

I had realized that I'm not a hard working type long ago, unless it's something I like doing. I've been handed everything on a plate and I have become used to it. I haven't had to work hard for anything be it getting good grades in school or getting into a decent college and passing out in the stipulated time or even getting a job. Until now. Keeping the job requires a level of dedication and effort which I'm not averse to. Losing the job is an exaggeration, it's more like being left behind/confined to the lower rungs of the success ladder. The competition is way ahead of me and I'm not doing enough to stay in the race. It's not the same as it was in college where I didn't care about the race because I had better things to do than studying. It matters now, I feel bad when I'm left behind. And it's a pretty bad way to realise that you suck. Enough cribbing, I should get to work.

High: Not that bad a day at work.

Low: Sigh. I sigh a lot, don't I?

Points: Don't know, you decide.

Desperate measures

I’m sick of this. I’m sick of not being able to write anything. I’m sick of not wanting to write when I actually decide to write. I’m sick of checking how many days since I last posted something and then going “Dammit! I need to write something!” and then deciding to write something and then not wanting to write after I actually decided to write and going “Sigh, I don’t have anything to write, will try again later”, and sulking about it later. I’m just sick of all of it. I even read my own blog and went “Man I could write!”. I didn’t need to have ‘something happen to me’ to want to write about it. I just wrote, without thinking about what I was going to write. And it turned out OK, even great on occasion (yes I’m vain, I love my own writing, that’s why I’m so depressed about not being able to write anything in the first place, so think of something else to comment on!). And here comes the block.

The last paragraph was written in a little under 5 minutes tops, I guess, and this sentence has taken 2 already! It’s not like I haven’t written anything at all, but what I did manage to write, I hated it. It was corporate crap about company growth, conducive learning environments, collaborative efforts to further knowledge acquisition and dissemination, corporate social responsibility, consistency in competency development activities, cultivating resources like centers of excellence, campus connect etc. to become a change agent for the future and help the continuing growth of the company to take it to an even higher pedestal of excellence. This is just a summary of the 1300 word story I wrote which contained more of the same crap (makes me cringe and want to crawl into a crevice inside a cave deep inside some lost canyon somewhere). The icing on the cake was that people actually liked it. For crying out loud, it could’ve been written by using a script that automatically inserted prepositions and punctuations between entries generated by a random bullshit generator! To put the cherry on top of the icing, I had to CC it to my boss along with the people who provided inputs, so that I could get review comments on grammar and punctuation. Well cut me balls off, chew me guts out, chastise me ass in public or strap me cranium to the chair, come what may, me shall not accept suggested corrections of said nature from the likes of thee (FYI punctuations are used to clearly indicate separate thoughts and ideas, not used to decorate sentences based on their length).

Wow! That felt so good! Let's do that again! Or not. So what else was I going to talk about? Oh yeah this newsletter thing at work for which I wrote all that corporate crap. After a long long time I actually enjoyed work. It was kinda like working on FreeRad but it just wasn't the same without the others. Still it was good fun, got to know Prachi a little better in the process as she helped me keep it all together, otherwise would've lost it completely because it's just too much work for one person. And both of us despise the senior authorities equally so we had something in common to have a laugh about too. Advise to people working in teams - being a part of the team is a big achievement in itself. There are some people who go to great lengths to show that they are better than the rest, they do more than others and think that they deserve extra credit. Actions speak louder than words, keep that in mind. You going about advertising how good you are is not even remotely as effective as someone else appreciating your efforts. These are the people from your team, who don't like you one bit right now. And you are not helping your case, it just gets worse everyday. Hope you learn a thing or two soon enough or you're going to hell, that too alone.

I was supposed to post this day before yesterday but somehow couldn't. Had so much more to say, hopefully will remember in time for the next post, provided there is one. Fingers crossed. Later.

High: Getting there, another round or two should do the trick.

Low: First para.

Points: 22k something points to me for providing an "EnRiching" experience to everyone in Infy. To Prachi and Santanu also. Cheers.

No excuses

It's been close to a month now since I last wrote something. Have been thinking about posting something for over two weeks now but just don't seem to be able to put pen to paper (fingers to keyboard, whatever) these days. It isn't the first time this is happenning but I think it got stretched a bit more than usual this time. Maybe because I feel the need to be really honest when I write here and I don't think being honest right now is going to take me places, places I don't want to be at anyway.

What's been going on in my life? Same old shit. Some good, some bad and some ugly. I think I'm going to reach a point soon where I'll just stop caring altogether, if I haven't already. But what do I know? I can't seem to take a stand on anything. Even trivial issues like "what should I eat" require a thought process rather than "whatever looks edible/is there". And I've run out of things to say now. My train of thought keeps derailing now and again, with or without distractions. There is a general lack of interest, where general means everything. I don't know for how long this will go on but I don't like where it's headed. I don't where anything is headed. Need to develop a serious interest in something, fast! Thinking about picking up EPL again, it made life interesting and a lot more exciting anyway. As soon as the idea came, along came the words "what's the point? It's too much trouble, find something else" from the voice of the evil spirit residing (blissfully, if I might add) in my empty skull.

What am I gonna do with myself?! Nothing it seems, can't even sit down and write something.

Whatever. I'm bored. Later (hopefully).

Sleepless

I was so exhausted today, I thought I would collapse as soon as I reached home. But as Murphy would have it, here I am more than 2 hours later, still trying to sleep. And I have to wake up early tomorrow! Listening to music, well not really listening, it's just ringing in my ears. If you ask me what song I just heard, I probably won't be able to tell you. Is it too much to ask for sound sleep after a hard day's work? Spent the entire day staring at the screen, pulling my hair out over a piece of code that just refuses to fall into place the way I want it to. Friggin database is so screwed up, simple queries just don't suffice, have to write entire procedures! Oh and don't even get me started about Microsoft. The software decides it's been open for too long and messes up the output without any changes in the code. After an hour, you give up and just close everything, start it again and voila! %#&@(@&^#%# with a lot of hair pulling and table beating.

Appraisal due next week, doesn't really matter because I haven't completed a year as an employee yet (not even by including training). That should be funny, especially since I'm up right after Mohit who is the "star performer" of our team and my roomie Rochak who is as good, if not better. Looking forward to it (not). There is this Infy-wide competition for Best Team (10 members or less) and my manager asked me to file our nomination, since I'm the unofficially official PR guy of the team (thanks to Rochak who exaggerated to no end how good I was so that his manager wouldn't mind me joining their team, exaggerated doesn't even cut it). It requires 1500 characters (not words, characters, including spaces) on 'My team is the best because' and 'The best team story we have so far'. I wrote such utter crap of supreme quality that I'm proud of it. You can check out something known as a Bullshit Generator, it's hilarious. But mine is better, it's so ridiculous it's awesome! Excerpt - "The senior members act as guiding beacons during any difficulties in matters professional and, if need be, personal. *more crap* The young blood is following suit, showcasing leadership capabilities, taking proactive measures in fulfilling the responsibilities along with sustaining the exponential growth of the development of the team into a highly potent force of academicians." Brilliant, ain't it? Pat on the back for myself. Felt a weird sense of pleasure and satisfaction as I completed this in the evening and sent it to the manager for review, who I'm hoping will love it to bits. That should bring an evil sinister grin to my face. Looking forward to that (really).

Went over to B/Anu's blog, found a cool widget, something that I was actually trying to do myself. But it just shows posts with images, some of the good ones don't have any. Will try and find a way around that. Till then, contend yourself with whatever it shows.

High: Made Pao Bhaji all by myself yesterday, and it was good. And the ridiculous writeup, cracks me up.

Low: Lack of sleep.

Points: 100 to me and 1000 to Rochak for successfully making Macroni on his own. His first real cooking endeavor.

बोरियत की इन्तहा

क्या लिखूं यार? कुछ है ही नही लिखने को. दिमाग का दही होगया है यहाँ पड़े पड़े. आज तीन-चार घंटे के लिए अकेला भटक रहा था मैसूर में। बाई गोड कहाँ फँस गया मैं! कोई दिल्ली में नौकरी दिलवा दो यार प्लीज़। मन नही लग रहा यहाँ पर अब। एक महिना है अभी घर जाने में, जल्दी से ख़तम हो बस। एक हफ्ता ही सही, घर तो घर है।

Note: If you can't read this then don't worry. Nothing worth reading anyway. Later.

Always works

Maggi with boiled eggs. Perfect comfort food. Always works. Well almost always. Day before yesterday just wasn't one of those days.

#end

P.S. - Photo is bad, Maggi was great.

Zzzzzzzz

I have never felt the need to sleep so much, ever. Just don't want to wake up in the morning, no matter when I sleep. Did exactly that today. Rochak had to leave super early so I decided not even to make an effort to wake up. Woke up two hours later than usual thanks to a phone call reminding me about a team meeting. Dammit! Grudging and cursing, dragged myself out of bed, to hell with bathing, pull myself away from the TV because of another phone call, Meg Ryan was about to make a run for the Empire State Building in probably the only part of the movie Sleepless in Seattle that I've managed to watch properly till date.

I reach the office, 15 minutes late for the meeting (thank God for saving me from at least that time) and thinking why did I even bother while yawning. Step out of the room, head straight to lunch. The rest of the day was pretty much frustrating as work kept piling up. Blew my top at around half past six and dropped everyting to listen to some music. I had updated the collection on my phone and removed all the hard rock/heavy metal numbers. Big mistake! There were a few of them left here and there which I had left for emergency purposes. Good call, needed that so badly. Hate work.

High: The extra two hours of sleep in the morning.

Low: The rest of the day, work, life.

Points: -10000 points to whoever it is who is handing out more work everyday.

Another week gone

It's almost like I'm counting down the days to the time I get the option to go home for good. It's only been just over a month since my year long stay in this place far away from home began. The first month was sort of fun, but the past week has been more than just difficult. Homesickness in it's purest form. Had an excuse to go home for only a day, one of my oldest friends Vishal was getting engaged, in a hurry if I might add, and to be honest I almost went even though he had given me only a day's notice. I even checked out tickets and stuff but it was just too short notice. And my family was holidaying in Shimla at the time. So whatever chances I did have (1 in a million also counts), it just wasn't supposed to happen. Oh before I forget, congratulations to Vishal and Shradha, all the best to you both, promise to be there for the wedding!

Anyways, so now I have to wait till September end to go home. It's so far away! The initial euphoria(?) of owning a new house, setting it up and enjoying it has worn off I guess. I still like where I live, but that's about it. There's nothing to do here. Either stay home or go to work. All the friends I made during the past 6 months or so have disappeared save one or two. Had become so used to that way of life. I've rambled about this before so no point repeating it. What hasn't changed is that I still miss my friends back home, even more so now. Have mentioned that too. I'm running out of things to crib about?! Impossible!!

Then there's work. The burden, the pain, the agony of it all. There's so much to do in so little time that I waste half the time worrying about it. I can't even get myself to sit down and read the next Forsyth (also finished The Negotiator) because I keep saying to myself I should be studying instead. Then, there's other important stuff I should be devoting time to but I won't even mention it because I haven't given it any time at all for almost a month now.

Since the three of us have only laptop between us, we have to give everyone there share of the time to use it. Some days, when the others are busy somewhere else and it's completely idle, you just don't know what to do with it. Wait online for a while for someone to show up and chat with, but for how long. And I can't spend hours on Facebook taking stupid quizzes or playing worthless games (except Scrabble, though I am in need of a good amount of practice). Even tired of listening to the same old music on my phone. One of these days I'm going to delete it all in a fit of frustration and then cry later. Or maybe I won't. My ears will certainly enjoy it (I think I'm going deaf in the left ear due to over-exposure).

My phone bill is going through the roof too. Can't seem to sit idle for even half an hour (the TV is no good either these days, something is really going wrong with this world), tend to call up random people sometimes. I hope I don't stall unnecessarily when the other person wants to hang up, I don't mean to (gulp, the BILL). Could that be a reason why I lot of people don't even attend my calls? Nah, now I'm just being silly. It's 2 a.m. already, have to get up early but don't feel like sleeping. Hate going to work in the morning. Guess that's enough babbling for now.

The Month That Was

Sorry Blog. It's been a month and 3 days since I last posted something. Jeez! That's a very long time now that I think about it. I have not been writing anything for the simple reason that I don't have aything to write about. Life is at a standstill. Nothing happens these days. You get up, drag your sorry arse over to class, doze through the day, carry your drained and sleepy butt back to your room and laze about till it's time to go back to sleep and dread the next morning. Sigh.

The entire month wasn't all that bad. I went home for about a week and believe me when I tell you I that needed it. Home-cooked meals, my big old bed, my ancient PC with a slow broadband connection, the sagging couch and bean bag, driving a car through the streets of Delhi and Noida, visiting college trying to figure out what has changed and realizing nothing has, meeting relatives and cousins, hanging out with friends, eating home-cooked food etc etc etc. It was great, but it could've been better if my friends were on holiday too. Well you can't have everything.

Oh and just after POST we had gone to Ooty for the weekend. The weather was awesome! It was great fun. Planning to go there again some weekend. At the moment the next stop is Kodaikanal (excuse spelling if wrong) for the long weekend coming up at the end of the month. Fingers crossed.

Extended training is a BIG BORE. Into my second week (technically third, was on leave for a good part of the first week, and luckily because the guys here tell me that it was hell!) and already find it unbearable. Modules finish today, project from tomorrow, hopefully will be better than classes.

Looking forward to getting posting in Chandigarh (hoping and praying) and watching the IPL (Go Daredevils!). Other than that hoping to get my phone back today from the Nokia Care centre. Have gone without music for two days now, can't take it anymore.

Finally finished reading 'The Day Of The Jackal', was great. Also read 'Kite Runner' when I went home, was different and good. Now reading 'The Negotitor', again by Forsyth, and as usual am stuck.

Can't promise regular posts because I don't think I can write anymore. There isn't a single stream of thought in my head which is worth pursuing for more than a minute of brain-time. And the general frame of mind these days is blank.

:|

Blank

Sometimes it just jumps out and hits you in the face when you least expect it. I mean, here I am sitting, trying to study for a test tomorrow and my lovely brain suddenly decides to ask myself about Life, The Universe and Everything. Thanks ol' buddy ol' pal!!

I'm not sure what the question is today, but it's something related to life. "Is this it? Is this what I'll be doing for the rest of my life?" Something on those lines, but not quite that. I've had a lot of moments like these, but something's different today. It's this empty, hollow. vaccuumish, sickening feeling inside me which is traveling it's way up to my head and making it spin in a way that is making me want to throw up. Is it the music I'm listening to? OK, my brain just went numb. Drawing a blank. And the worst part is I'm not even exaggearting! What the @#$% is going on!

Embarrassed

I stayed up till 5 am for an exam! ME!! What has the world come to!?!
This is one of my lowest moments.

Also, got JAVA for stream.
Most people in different classrooms, and some more in different buildings :(
Coffee breaks won't be the same again.
This was our last night together *winks* :P

P.S. - In my defense, I didn't study or anything, was here for err... moral support. You know, I'll be there for youuuu.....

Late to wait

Just gave the four-finger salute. Feels weird.

Exactly like last Monday after the test, I wasn't allowed to come inside the class because I was a minute too late. The difference being that last time atleast half of the class was with me. This time I was probably the only guy in all of the classes who didn't make it in time.

It's not like I had gone to my room after the test, I was standing in front of a different classroom with my friends and could see that people were standing outside my class too. But then I checked my phone only to realize that I was late (read the teacher was way early) yet again. You should always try so I went in and was politely told to "come after the break". No hard feelings because I rather enjoyed the break.

The thing I'm worried about now is this becoming a ritual. In college, my 'thing' was coming to class late, huffing and puffing and panting and sweating (if I was late I ran to the class, how naive). People would actually be surprised if I walked in breathnig normally and on time. So here, I'm in danger of being known for missing the first session after every test. Let's hope not, third time's a charm.

Minutes After Midnight

Yawn.

I'm sitting in the GEC (I like to call it the Gecko, GEC takes much more time to pronounce), the clock shows 01:40 am and I don't feel like studying any more. I have some company here so I don't feel like going back to my room. I actually hate my room. I hate calling it "room". It is supposed to be home, but it feels weird calling it home. I would call it home, but most of my friends have lived in hostels and they call it room and so it just follows. I am usually the last person to go home, I mean to my room, every night and it's not just because my block is on the far end of the campus, I just don't like to stay awake inside my room with nothing to do. The beautiful LCD TV is useless to me because I hardly watch anything on it. My aim everyday is to reach the damn place so late and so tired that all I can do is sleep (or occasionally watch the late night edition of Seinfeld and then sleep). In the morning, I get up late which is good in a way since I spend less awake time in my room.

I find it suffocating, no offence to the ventilation department, it's a psychological thing. If there is even one more person in the room, it is a completely different place to be in. Then it feels like you are on a vacation and staying in a nice hotel room. Like right now, the two of us are the only people left in this huge hall of a classroom but it doesn't feel weird (just a little bit, I'm supposed to be studying).

Enough about the room now, it is pretty depressing. I miss home. I've spent my entire life at home (i.e. never stayed away from family during any phase of my education ever, thank god for that!) and this is pretty unbearable for me now. It's just been about three weeks and I felt like going back by the end of the first week itself. Everytime I sit down to have a meal, I miss home the most. My mom is the best cook in the world and she has spoilt me to such an extent with great food throughout my life that nothing else seems to live upto my expectations. I have never eaten non-veg food so regularly ever in my life and had never thought that I would come to the point of hating it.

It's about 02.30 am now so in classic soap opera style:

To be continued.............

Importance of being comfortable

Few of my friends constantly wonder why I crib so much about traffic. According to them it's not that bad. To put things into perspective I'm going to explain the reason for my woes.

The level of agitation and frustration experienced by a person when driving in the city is directly proportional to their current level of discomfort. Here are the prominent cases:

1. Your car has an AC, a music system, you have company and you are not in a hurry. You don't give a shit about how badly you may be stuck. For all you know, you just might be enjoying the "long" drive.
2. Your car has an AC, a music system and you are in a hurry. Too bad, you were really hoping to get there on time. Hard luck, you tell yourself. At least you have a valid excuse.
3. Your car has an AC but you are have time on your hands. The state of traffic is pretty bad. Something should be done about it.
4. You car has an AC and you are in a hurry. Stuck in traffic, running late and nothing to keep you occupied. Bloody hell! Where did all these people come from? The country has gone to the dogs.
5. Your car does not have an AC or a music system, no one to share the discomfort but you are not in a hurry to reach the destination. You are still in a hurry to get the hell off the bloody blocked up road.
6. Your car has nothing, it's just a box on wheels, and you are in a hurry. The words agitation and frustration don't quite describe what you go through.

No points for guessing which category I fall into. I rest my case.

Points: I don't feel like giving out points today. Any one who's reading this can take 100 points and the people who can understand my woes, you get an additional 100 points.

One-Liner: I'll be back. (a la Schwarzenegger)

Dear Traffic Gods

This is to humbly request you to notify us of the sins we have committed in this life or any other previous lives for which we have been sentenced to such a painful punishment. It makes me shiver just to think what act of inhumanity could deserve such a punishment! It's almost like you are pouring vehicles to fill up any stretch of road that does not have bumper to bumper connectivity. Traffic lights are the dams which are holding back a river which has breached the 'Swim or Die' mark. Wave after wave of angry frustrated motorists are thrashing against the walls, struggling to break free. It will give in sooner or later. Please control it before it crosses the zebra crossing.

We are willing to offer a sacrifice of the most expensive cars that are stuck in the traffic on the BRT corridor or a nice barbecue where we grill a few Blueline buses which have blood on their tyres and bumpers. How about hiking the price of petrol by another 20 rupees?

I confess that I feel guilty every time I think about taking out the car to go somewhere. I swear I'm a changed man. Doesn't that count to lessen the punishment in any way? Perhaps a concession on the amount of traffic during the non-peak hours, or should I say the non-Mt. Everest hours better known as the K2 and Kanchenjunga hours. I'm not mocking you Lord, it's just a way of putting things to give you an idea of the gravity of the situation.

Please forgive us.

Amen.

P.S. - I think I went too far with the 20 rupees hike, just ignore that one. Bluelines are as good as roast, just say the word.

Chaos theory

UPTU End Semester Examinations
Civil Engineering
2025-26
Chaos Theory [TCV - 101]

Q. Draw the plan of a city with unplanned roadways, illegal constructions, overflowing population, shortage of basic amenities like water and electricity, potholes with sections of flat roads at not so regular intervals, construction work that just makes these "roads" even smaller, people who don't know how to drive big-ass expensive cars from riding bullock-carts, so-called traffic laws coupled with zero law enforcement and other similar factors that are supposed to make life hell for anyone in this city who has to go from Point A to Point B. Also name the city which most closely resembles this plan and comment on the plan.

Listed below is a chart of distances covered and the time taken to cover them on an everyday route by a common man on a common day at a common time.

Distance (in kms) : Time (in hrs)

0.1 : 0.25
1 : 0.5
3 : 1
5 : 1.5
8 : 3
10* : NA
(*covering this distance in one stretch should not be tried in real life)

Deduce the average speed of the journey in each case. Assume an extrapolated figure for the last case.

(50+50=100)

Ans. Delhi - I think that the question in itself is a sufficient comment on the plan of the city. It would be unfair to the architects who worked on this city's plan (and to the people who would live in the new city) if we reproduce the same plan for another city.

The distance-time relationships given here are highly subjective as other factors like unnecessary barricades and road-blocks (for eg. due to a VIP Convoy of 50 high-end SUVs heading towards a McDonald's Drive Through in the busiest marketplace of the above mentioned city), monsoon showers that deepen the depressions in the potholes and other forms of traffic like stray cattle, daredevils on bicycles and jaywalking pedestrians have not been taken into consideration (an average 1km journey with all these factors taken into consideration has been known to last for a minimum of 3.5 hours).

Therefore, here is a subjective calculation for the average speeds:

Distance (in Kms) : Speed

0.1 : Slow
1 : Very Slow
3 : Agonizingly Slow
5 : Murderously Slow
10 : Indeterminable

False Freedom 2

It's been exactly a year since my last post on Independence Day. Things haven't changed much. The world is still a bad place, if not worse. Case in point: a friend of mine was thinking about spending the weekend with her family in a hill-station but couldn't go because of some riots. Inflation is at an all time high, the IT industry is slowing down ( there goes my prospective job offer :-S ..), terrorist attacks all over the country, parliament debating about Cheerleaders' dresses during IPL matches, that about sums it up. Suffocating. How the system isn't imploding is a thing of marvel!

I know it's easy to say rather than do, but I'm trying to do my bit. I don't litter the roads, I don't drive at night with blinding headlights, I don't discriminate based on caste and religion, I volunteer to help clear up traffic jams, I'm trying to help the underprivileged. I'm still not quiet there but I've made a start. I hope to work on it and make a difference, no matter how small.

Is India 61 years old or still too young as a country to be considered old?

Speed Thrills But Kills!

That is what flashed above me on an electronic signboard as I crawled my way through an almost stationary never ending queue of cars in the afternoon sun without an AC in my car.

What should've been a 20 second drive staying within the speed limit took more than 20 minutes of bumper-to-bumper driving in 48 degrees C heat without a trace of a breeze outside, just because some sadistic cop thought it would be great fun to convert an 8 lane road into a cramped 2 lane passageway by putting up barricades all over the place! I was actually hoping to see a car with an open hood (and the driver swearing at someone on the phone to come quickly) or even a wreck of an accident between a truck and a bus (in which no one got hurt except the flow of traffic) once I got to the end of that horrible traffic jam and was praying for anything but the barricades and an unmanned "CHECK POST", but Jim loves to play with me and that is exactly what I got. And I guess You put that cop there holding the gun and looking in the other direction just to make me feel better, as if it was actually important to have that CHECK POST which was there to supposedly look for some maniacal serial suicide bomber who escaped in broad daylight, never mind the mile long slow moving car exhibition (I could swear I saw a snail overtake me!) in the middle of the afternoon on a bright and clear sunny day, not to mention extremely hot and humid. Thanks a lot Jim, I thought you were just messing with me!

The bad thing about traffic is that you can't think straight. The other day when I was driving to C.P., there was moderate traffic and I was thinking about something very interesting but I lost that train of thought at a signal which turned red because the car in front of me wouldn't budge even when it turned green. That is the second most annoying thing in the world, the first being having a car breakdown in the middle of the road. There was this one time when I had the pleasure of crossing 5 of those very annoyed people on a two lane road, spanning only 3 km, in just under 30 minutes, and I'm not even exaggerating!

Anyway, I was late for a meeting which didn't happen because the person I was supposed to meet wasn't even there. Then, oh it isn't over yet, when I was making my over to meet someone else, the gear went limp! It felt like it was fixed to the base of a car with a chewing gum and would come off any second. I figured if it was supposed to happen, it would happen even if I was going home, so I battled with the gear and made my through more and more traffic in the burning heat, still cursing at that cop who put up the barricades.

By the time I reached home I was starving, my left foot was throbbing with pain because of all the clutch action coupled with the leather shoes I was wearing, I was dripping with sweat even though my shirt and hand-towel were already soaked, the car had clocked more than 50 kms, had a gearshift hanging on by sticky chewing gum threads and an empty fuel tank. In all, a very productive day since the other guys who had gone for some other meeting apparently struck a deal (for the record, they had a car with an AC and no traffic jams).

Points: -1 Billion points to whoever thought it was a good idea to put up barricades on that road today. You suck!!

-1 Million points to the person who actually put those barricades into place. You suck too. Have a little compassion for Jim's sake!

-1000 points to whoever gave us the wrong information about the meeting that never took place. You suck.

100 points to whoever made the chewing gum that is holding the gearshift in place. You stick!

One-Liner: When your car breaks down and it is a small repair, the mechanic has to remove the engine to get to that part.