I was so much older then

Expression does blow out a lot of heat.

For me mostly life has been my way or the highway, but over some time in the near pasy, I am starting to believe whether I am becoming too accommodating of people trying to control and do things on my behalf. My disagreements come to the fore, but I let them whittle away.

I have believed in a few things like simplicity, need based purchase and Minimalism. I still stand by those values, but people around me do not want any of it. And after so many years of holding out, I am giving in.

At a level, I guess it is the deterioration of an individual, but it is coinciding with an important event in my life. Extrapolating what Hariharan said a few days back in a concert about a new genre which got created ,Urdu  blues. Is this the marriage blues, where you let people smash up the things dear to you, as if your marriage is everybody else's business but your own.  


The paraphernalia, the attempt at grandeur, the attempt at perfection. Everything converging into a lot of smoke in my head.

from here,

Ryan Bingham: If you think about it, your favorite memories, the most important moments in your life... were you alone?
Jim Miller: No, I guess not.
Ryan Bingham: Hey, come to think of it, last night, the night before your wedding, when all this shit is swirling around in your head, weren't you guys sleeping in separate bedrooms?
Jim Miller: Yeah, Julie went back to the apartment, and I was just by myself in the honeymoon suite.
Ryan Bingham: Kind of lonely, huh?
Jim Miller: Yes, it was pretty lonely.
Ryan Bingham: Life's better with company.
Jim Miller: Yeah. 

From here, 

Crimson flames tied through my ears
Rollin’ high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps
“We’ll meet on edges, soon,” said I
Proud ’neath heated brow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
“Rip down all hate,” I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull. I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

Girls’ faces formed the forward path
From phony jealousy
To memorizing politics
Of ancient history
Flung down by corpse evangelists
Unthought of, though, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now 

A self-ordained professor’s tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
“Equality,” I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

In a soldier’s stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not that I’d become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
My pathway led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now 

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

Update : His highness Mr Tiwari believes I should have written that "the thought of spending money is scaring the shit out of me". So here it goes. :-) And yes Ghazal blues has been corrected to Urdu blues.Thx sir for correcting me.

Mangalore and Kevadia

My being at home this Sunday is kinda a rarity.I have been to various places in the last month or so, or someone has been coming, and time just seems like it has taken on new wings. But, this is making me forget my objectives. So,since I am not asking myself difficult questions, I should speak with other people and make them ask me difficult questions. Something like that happened out of an accidental talk the other day.
The fact is I am taking crap, and I am accepting it. That should never happen.

I have been to Mangalore. Surprising that though Mangalore and Bangalore are equidistant from here, the journey to Mnagalore takes about 8 hours less in the train. While in Mangalore, went around to see the Bekel Fort in Kasargod( Kerala), the same fort where the Tu Hi Rey song has been shot from the movie Bombay.

Also went to Kapu Lighthouse/ beach. This one in Udupi. I guess, there is nothing much to see in Managalore, or I might have missed something.

On one of the other weekends I went to See the Sardar Sarovar Dam in Kevadia Colony. We boarded an overnight train from Bandra Terminus and got down at Ankaleshwar Junction at 4 AM. Though I wanted to straight away get on with the journey, my friend wanted to take some rest. So, we booked the retiring room at the station, for 200 bucks, it was the most luxurious retiring room, I have ever lived in. That too, bang on a station platform.

We woke up again in the morning and headed to the bus stand from where to catch a bus for Rajpipla or Kevadia.After asking with a lot of people, we figured that we need to head to a place called rajpipla chokdi, and from there take a mini bus or share jeep to rajpipla, and change buses from rajpipla.

Once there, a paanwala suggested we take a ride in a truck. He was suppose to drop us at some place between rajpipla and Kevadia. He ended up dropping us at bhandra. And for the past half an hour, I am trying to add bhandra to google maps, but am unable to do so. Need to read the extensive documentation on google maps first. That would be some effort.

The truck dropped us at Bhandra, and there we started our wait for some form of commute to Kevadia. Aftes an hour, a few bhajiya and a tea later we got a share auto. As is our fate, a government bus overtook us, very soon.

Unlike other state governments the Gujrat government has promoted Sardar Sarovar as a tourist destination, and people are encouraged to view the dam. As luck would have it, when we reached there, the Dam was overflowing. They say, the gates are yet to be built. Some court case is going on rehabilitation.

We had to take a licence from the tourism office, and luckily got an auto to roam around. Everybody except us had their own personal vehicles. We too got the auto, as a chokdidar took pity on us and gave us the cell number of the auto wallah.

The autowallah took us around, we saw the dam, a few engineering drawings, the canal, few huge artificial lakes etc. Towards the end we landed up in kevadia colony, which looked like a ghost town, as a lot of state government quarters which had been made up when the construction was i full swing were deserted and empty.

The Dhokla at Kevadia was very different. It was very watery, unlike the other dholas I have tasted. We then took  a tata ace on share and left for Indra Mahal. An hour of waiting later, we got a gov. bus to dediapada. We reached Dediapada at about 7:30 PM and then left for Mozda. 

A convenient idea of time

Ratnagiri happened again.

A day before the departure, I was told that a wall had collapsed and trains were cancelled/diverted/not running. My friend coming from Mangalore expressed concern about the same, which I waved off as ususal. I told her the wall collapse was a day back, it will not take Konkan Railways more than a day to repair the route, and trains will run perfectly normally tomorrow.

One of the challenges with doing sales in your life is sometimes you yourself forget you are bull shitting and start believing that your lies are somehow true.

She boarded her train at about 8 in the night and reached Ratnagiri at 7:30 PM the next day, in a Maharashtra State Transport Bus.KR had forcibly delayed the train, so that it reached Madgaon in the afternoon, so that passengers could be fed and Ratnagiri in the evening. The passengers got down at Adavali, some 40 KM from Ratnagiri and were asked to board the buses. Apparently there were only 4 buses present there

As for me, the Janshatabdi was stopped at Chiplun for a mighty 1.5 hour. A grumpy old man besides me was grumbling that the driver had to have lunch so they stopped the whole train for an hour and half. The fact being that  KR had managed the show perfectly well. They had placed an order for lunch , both veg and Non veg for all the passengers in the train, and were merely waiting for the lunch to be delivered. They figured that at Ratnagiri, the interchange between bus and train will not be all that manageable if passengers were hungry. Furthermore, the food was free.

So I landed up at Ratnagiri at around 2 PM, a few hours late, but well fed. So were the other passengers, who then got into a ST bus for upto Adavali, and onwards to Madgaon.

Surprisingly the train was a trifle empty and I later guessed that a lot of passengers might have chickened out on hearing the news, and sort of did not have sufficient faith in the railways/ govt. That they would be taken care of.

With the benefit of hindsight I realised this is a normal practice for KR, as and when a mudslide happens.

After getting down at Ratnagiri, I went to Theeba point, and Theeba palace. The palace was a letdown, but the point was worth everything. We went to Ganapatipule in the evening and the fort in the morning. Since her return train was redirected and there were no direct buses from Ratnagiri to Managalore,somebody suggested I take a ticket from Kolhapur. After the misadventure she had had to reach Ratnagiri, I did not want to take any chances and booked her ticket from there. Surprisingly, tickets were available in a train from Kolhapur to Mumbai, so  I cancelled my Ratnagiri - Mumbai ticket and booked a ticket from Kolhapur. Thanks to the tatkal idea.

We boarded a Karnataka Road transport bus the next day from ratnagiri, which kept us guessing whether we would reach Kolhapur by 7 PM or not. Moreover the bus from Kolhapur to Mangalore was a Vijayanand bus, with a reputation of being on time, so more pain.

Somehow, we reached there by 6:45, I got into a restaurant where I had gone earlier when I was in Kolhapur for Karale's wedding. I saw her off and headed to the only place which was open at that time, Mahalaxmi Temple. With no intention of getting into the temple, I sat outside for a hour or so, just observing people around me. I had the company of a lot of retired uncles who were gossiping taway to glory. People getting in and out of temple, carrying all sorts of paraphernalia, kids sitting on the temple wall etc.

Btw, the autos in Kolhapur run by meters and are the autowallahs are actually polite. I wanted to have the famed Kolhapuri Misal/Usal but by the time I got outside the temple premises all the famous Usal Pau shops were closed, so I went back to my default restaurant at the bus stand for my dinner.

Later I went to the station and to my surprise my 3 tier was upgraded to 2 tier.

View Larger Map

Ratnagiri Twice Over

So there was this random thought of going to Ganapatipule. Another whim/ pipe dream. The night before I wasn't even sure if the tickets would be confirmed and we will actually make this journey. Within a month, I was there twice. Games destiny plays.

We had WL 150 odd in the Jan shatabdi but got the tickets confirmed through jugaad.Actually the tickets were unavailable for booking either online or through a ticketing window. But again, jugaad helped.

A few days after we went their, Konkan railway has made some changes in the schedule of Jan Shatabdi and incresed its time by 3-4 hours. I am not sure why , but they should have some reason for that. I guess it is called Konkan railways's monsoon schedule.

We reached ratnagiri in the afternoon, Had lunch near the main market and headed off to Ganapatipule.A better , though expensive way to go to GP is in an auto, through the newly cut road.The distance is reduced by some 15-20 km and the road is pretty scenic.

The next day we visited the Ratnagiri fort. After spending the evening at the GP beach the day before. The fort is set up at a mountain on a shoreline, which makes the view quite amazing. You have waves of water hitting the black rocks, when you look down below and a never ending sea view towards the horizon. Something comparable was what we saw when we first went to Goa and were driving back from one of the beaches in South Goa. We just stopped randomly on the road, and casually looked back and their was this view of sea almost 3 quarters of a circle.

While coming back I asked the auto wallah what more can be of interest here. Theeba palace, he said. Some Thai King's bungalow converted into a museum. And then the penny dropped, The Glass Palace.

Each time Amitava Ghosh had described the palace and boats coming to Ratnagiri , I had mapped a particular imagination with it. Like the place where the queen would sit every day and wait. The first time she would see the mast head of an approaching boat etc.But I did not know how good was my imagination. And here was a chance to test it out, right out of the blue. Well, I could not go there as democracy prevailed, and my other two friends had no interest in either Thailand or an old museum. And I did not have the patience to communicate my thoughts on imagination.

So it remained a dream. Next time, I said to myself. The next time surprisingly came within two weeks.

Managing Transients

So you have had your share of rides. Extreme highs and extreme lows. It has made you realise actually the things that matter and the trivial ones, which should not. And you then see people fretting around you over the trivial ones and kinda wonder, just why ? Things like ratings, boss's, money someone else is making etc.
And then you go back in time and recollect a phase of your own life when you were the other person. And then you start accepting things as they are.

Now you are this guy for better or for worse who kinda knows the things which matter and so you make plans, like everybody else. Long term plans, something which is not your specialty. And then accept the fact that everyday life will be a humdrum affair and you will just have to wait for the evenings in the mornings, the fridays on  the mondays and the next week in this week. And you realise also that generally you are wasting your time.

And then the transients hit you, the humdrum of daily life. You try to tell yourself, these are only transients. Over a sufficiently long time frame, transients die out and are forgotten. But what the hell do you do when you are right in the middle of a transients, doing silly things, realising that you are wasting your time. It is like your head wants to explode, sometimes you fall from your path, are rude to people around you, snap at people for unnecessary reasons.

No, I have not yet found answers as to what to do then. The simple answer is trivialise things, learn to laugh at problems, understand that they are not the biggest things in this world.

But when it is your own bloody life in which these things happen, it makes you think.

And thought is the most dangerous device.     

Delhi Darshan

In my numerous visits to Delhi before, mostly as a transit halt, I had not bothered to discover the city itself. But this time I took a day extra from my official visit and took some time exploring stuff.

1. Paranthe wali gali, chandani chowk
2. Lotus Temple
3. Iskon temple
4. Humayun's tomb
5. PVR Saket and DLF Saket mall
6. Lal Quila
7. Jantar Mantar
8. Airport Metro

Though I abhor malls, sometimes with people around, you just cannot help it. PVR saket has been thoroughly deserted these days. The last I went there was I guess in 2005. Now it's as good as a graveyard.

Delhi is a historical city, unlike Mumbai. The most impressive was the semi museum outside Humayun's tombs, which explains the same. Apparently there have been attempts to found 7 cities in and around Delhi all along Yamuna's course.

Also discovered the Ho Ho Service but could not get in as I was travelling in a direction opposite to it's. It is a good idea for Rs 350 a day and the convenience of taking your own time at a place. Link here. 

The airport metro is pretty fast and sometimes way too high,but a pity that it starts from New Delhi. CP would have been a better option. Though with so many terminals,(T1, T39 no T2 ?) one of these days I am going to miss a flight by ending up on a wrong terminal.

Lotus temple is affiliated to the bahai faith. Another religion/ sect.

Hand Rickshaws still ply in Delhi, and chandani chowk is not as bad as people in delhi make out. The natives generally do not seem to prefer going there. Too congested, the sophisticated snobs say.

The next time I am there would like to explore Humayun's tomb a lot more, as that was the most interesting thing I saw. The area around it as well. The narrow road which goes past the main entrance. 

Some Old, Some New

I woke up early in the morning and walked towards the Dam Park to have some poha and tea. In some time I realised that a lot of people were going further up the road of my guest house.Carrying cocunuts and other pooja items.On further enquiry I was told about a ghat further down the road.
I changed my plans of hitting the bridge and headed towards discovering the ghat. Due to the zigzag contours of the lake, I could not see this ghat from the Dam park.

Took a boat ride on the Ghat, where a 10-12 old girl was rowing the boat.After some thought, took a bath as well in the water. After that, I came back to the guesthouse, packed my belongings and walked towards the bridge, which people say has reduced the travel time between khandwa and bhopal by a few hundred Kilometers.

From there I took a ride in a truck upto Moondi. Harsud is about 30 Km from Bondi, and though Google Maps shows a road between the two, actually there is no public transport between the two. I guess a few of the roads stand partially drowned due to the lake. So I took a bus firsk to Khandwa, about 30 KM from Moondi, and from there another bus to Harsud, which was a further 62 KM.

The place I landed up was Chanera. I had my lunch there and struck up a conversation with the dhaba owner. He was originally from Harsud. He said, this is the 7th year since he has been relocated.

After having my lunch , I wanted to see the sectors and the manufactured structures of New Harsud, so I Asked a tangawala to drop me there. I asked him, I wanted to go to Harsud, He thought I wanted to go to the old one and redirected me to take a tempo from down the road.

A tempo is suppose to leave from that junction once every half an hour and I suppose I am lucky that I get into the tempo at around 3:25 PM. But there is a rider, a tempo if left unfulfilled can call off their turn. So with Murphy on the side the tempowalla calls it off at 3:30. Ditto at 4. Finally the tempo leaves at 4:30 and I reach old harsud around 5 PM. The tempo walla promises to come back to pick me in half an hour's time, but ditches me.

I am left at a road leading to no where and the tempo takes a u turn. A few other folks get down who live in the fringes of what is left of harsud. And I walk into Harsud, the destroyed one.

It feels like a deserted town, but more than that a broken and deserted town. I guess all the structures except the religious ones were broken down manually so that people could not return. And all of them have a serial number painted on them.

Narmada Sagar - The Trip

Execution

Day 0:
I get into Punjab mail. I have some side lower seat in a second class compartment, adjacent to the compartment door. Something to generally cherish, but not n a second class compartment, coz any Indian train usually also is a general compartment, where people generally hop in for short distances, and pay the TT some petty bride to just sit there.

I discover my seat, and three people are already sitting on it, with one guy putting his chappals on the seat, I rudely ask him to take his feet down and not make my would-be bed dirty. During the night I discover that the dude and 7-8 along with him are part of MP's wrestling team, and had come to Mumbai for some inter state wrestling contest.

I exchange my seat with some other dude, who has a longer seat, where i might fit in, and get ready to sleep, only to discover that it is pretty cold, and I haven't brought  any pull over sheet. The rest of the night is spent shivering, and trying to sleep. The wrestling company gets down at Khandwa, from there they will take a meter gauge train to Indore. The one I took the last time, on my way to Maheshwar.

Day 1:

I get down at Khirkiya around at 6:30 AM and walk into the station master's room. I discuss my plans of seeing the dam, some water and Harsud with him and his side kick.
Kya dekhna hai tumko, Paani?  I nod in assent. I am given my options. For new Harsud, there is a bus every half an hour starting from 7-7:30. I may also take a train and get down at Chanera and go to Harsud. I discover in due course that Chanera is also New Harsud, my destination, but later. In my mind there still is only one Harsud left, the new one, but when I am being advised, they think I want to see the old Harsud, and advice me accordingly.

If you want to see water, you can go to Piplani in a share auto. I later discover Piplani is one amongst three stations which has drowned due to Indira Sagar Project.
For the Dam  take the Kashi passenger in the reverse direction at 7 AM, get down at Talvariya and take a bus from there for Narmada Nagar.

But why the hell did you come to Khirkiya, In any case you should have got down at Khandawa. I did not have the heart to tell them that from Google Maps, Khirkiya, looked like a good option to start this trip.

I make my plans to go to Piplani, got into a shady lodge to freshen up, have a breakfast of Poha and chai, walk up to the share auto to go to Piplani, but then chang my mind and go back to the station to go to Talvariya. I royally miss the kashi passenger and sleep on the station bench for a couple of hours for the next passenger train. The train arrives at around 10, and reaches Talvariya some time later.I take a bus from there and work up a contact to find somebody in Naramada Nagar, when it occurs to me that an uncle actually has worked here for some time about 15 years back.

I get myself a government rest house, pretty shady and dirty, but with the one thing I badly want that day, a bed. I was told bluntly, there is no lunch, if you want to have a lunch, you have to walk down a couple of kilometers in the blistering Saturday afternoon. I watch some first few overs of the India Sri Lanka final and then go to sleep.

I wake up in the evening, see some 40 to 45 overs of Sri Lankan innings and go discover the Dam. The dudes have made a nice park for people to come visit the dam. For a lot of people, the dam usually is part of some pilgrimage, as if it is some sort of a temple. The CRPF dude informs me that the Musem in the park has been closed permanently because of the dehati people, who generally vandalize the properties.

I go back to the guest house, try to convince the khansama for some dinner, but he flatly refuses. So I walk down to the bus stand to have my dinner. I also watch bits and pieces of the match outside every shop on the road. A TV has sprung up mysteriously in all the shops, and everybody is watching the match. People in the colony on some big screen in the open air theater.  I curse fate for making me walk 4-5 km for a dinner. Tomorrow, I will walk 6 KM at a brisk pace to try not missing my train. I come back to the guest house watch Dhoni move from 46 to 90 odd and win the Cup.

Tomorrow, I make plans for leaving for Harsud early in the morning. But before that I need to go the bridge downstream to the Dam and then take an early morning bus for Harsud. I will first have to go to Khandwa and from there to Harsud.

Finally Harsud

The Planning

I have wanted to go to Harsud for a long time. Couple of reasons. There was a lot of hue and cry when it was getting submerged few years back, around seven, and the fact that a new city was manufactured called new Harsud and people forced to believe that this is their old Harsud. Divided into sectors, very well organised etc. I wanted to see how people have taken to this form of staying in a manufactured city.

I was assuming that Harsud as it did in the past does not exist anymore as it has been completely submerged by water. This was an assumption which got busted in due course.

The other reason is my belief in the Arundhati Roy school of inquisition, where you your self go and see things as they are for yourself, rather than read or see some journalists presentations of the facts. In short, I call this method as : Go to the source.

And I had seen this reservoir, Indira Sagar on Google maps and  wanted to go and see it. Since this is a reservoir, there should at least be one damn somewhere around it. And my vague idea was that I wanted to see it.

Broadly if I were to structure my thoughts, I would say I am interested in huge infrastructure projects like Dams and its effects like resettlement. I have not go much into environmental effects and other ecological changes caused by dams.

This was a whim like a thousands I hold, but firmly believe in taking them seriously. So Harsud was in the background. And I also happened to be reading this book , The river and Life by Sanjay Sangavi, which talks about some NGO type conference which happened in Harshud in late 80's. This brought Harsud back on top of my mind and somebody told me that Monday was off.

I joined both these and figured why not use the long weekend and see Harsud, so what if there is a world cup final on Saturday.So this plan was made thought on a Thursday and executed on Friday evening, when I barely got out my bosses clutches to hang on to a Punjab mail, that evening leaving for khirkiya.

P.s. Someday when I start taking my writing more seriously, i will try to edit out the crutches of "And", "That" and "So" from my writing.

Ordering

A lot of what we end up doing, picking up jobs, marrying women, picking on B schools, picking cities, deciding whether we want to end up in US or remain in the dhool mitty of India depends on the order that these things arrive in our lives.

One women before the other, one job before the other, one screw up before the other...

Even the time it takes to execute v lookup depends on whether you have sorted the data or not.

In Mathematics, duality or inverse is akin to what would have happened if things were presented to us in a different order, would't life have turned out pretty different. 

In Criticism of myself

In the end, it all boils down to love, sweetheart. From Saath Khoon Maaf. 

For a woman i.e. 

For a man, just replace the word love with ego. 

It seems that women are generally lost in an eternal quest for finding love, while men are more ambitious and look for more than just love in a life. Most of the men i.e. 

Btw the last post I had written about the rules of the game kinda sucked. Sometimes rules are good in that they give you a sense, false or true, that you know what you are doing. At other times, it is not a bad idea to dump the rules and just go with the flow, where ever the flow takes. 

Book of the moment: Road by Cormac McCarthy. Interesting thus far.

On being an asshole

Marylin Delpy: You're not an asshole, Mark. You're just trying so hard to be. 

Dhobhi Ghaat

brilliant camera work. OKish storyline. So So movie. Just like a manufactured normal page in a daily newspaper in Mumbai.

But yes, a good background score, by some foreigner I guess.

And why does Shai have a foreign accent. She could have had had a parsi a dhinga kinda accent.

Hobby of the moment: Finding gaps in the education sector where ideas can be explored.

Book of the moment: Arvind adiga's other book was crap. Now reading The Finkler Question.

It was surprising to realise that Dad and Mom know so much about Dhoobi Ghaat. A lot more than me actually as their two main sources of knowledge remain the TV and the newspaper, both of which I personally desist.

There is so much they want to talk I guess, but I am not open to conversations. Simple Harold Pinter types of conversations, but I am myself hung up about marriage & how to better manage my workplace.

There is this gap between myself and my parents, like we live in two different worlds. I live with them but still my thoughts, my actions, my expectations, my confusions are so different, or are they? Though they have brought me up , my existence is also a function of the surroundings which they sent me to initially, and the ones which I choose to go to later on.

Yasmeen in Dhoobi Ghat reminded me of Ruksar's story.She should be somewhere in Saudi. Married, mother, happy.

Totally jobless weekend comes to an end. More officing around but thank Britishers for their enslavement that we could fight them, get freedom and get an off, bang on a Wednesday.  

Public mai sansani , ek baar

From Wiki

A stereotype is a held popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings. Stereotypes are standardized and simplified conceptions of groups based on some prior assumptions.

When a kid grow up those around the kid, mostly his parents and relatives start stereotyping him/her like 

• He yells like hell 
• She is of quieter type
• He has no interest in business
• Whatever he tries he fails

etc.

From these stereotypes and our own experiences about life, good or bad, emerge ideas like

• He has to be fixed. Like fix a job, a marriage etc.
• He has to complete his education, he has no mind for business

So when one is on the other side, say on the inside/ receiving end of these ideas, one generally revolts. Trying to assert otherwise, and in the process helping to strengthen the stereotype. And the ideas that come are

• Why can't people leave me alone
• Why not just allow me to learn from my life and keep me out of your prejudiced viewpoint

And life turns into a melange of these ideas, jumping from one to another. Sometimes, me stereotyping people, at other times trying to fight the stereotype that has been fixed like Samuel Taylor Coleridge would have called it, an albatross. 

_________________________________________________________

Ryan Bingham: [on getting through airport security] Never get behind old people. Their bodies are littered with hidden metal and they never seem to appreciate how little time they have left. Bingo, Asians. They pack light, travel efficiently, and they have a thing for slip on shoes. Gotta love 'em.
Natalie Keener: That's racist.
Ryan Bingham: I'm like my mother, I stereotype. It's faster. 

_________________________________________________________

Ryan Bingham: I thought I was a part of your life.
Alex Goran: I thought we signed up for the same thing... I thought our relationship was perfectly clear. You are an escape. You're a break from our normal lives. You're a parenthesis.
Ryan Bingham: I'm a parenthesis? 

Blow Up

So there is this get together that gets organised. For all direct reportees present and past of an ex boss of mine. About 15 people turn up, with barely 2-3 people missing. A testimony to the popularity of my erstwhile boss.

We have people from all possible banks there, you name it and either people have worked there or are working there.

Only I am an anachronism. Except me, each one has struck on to their profile.

Looking back, am I happy, content, relieved or disappointed that I walked the path that I ended up walking, which in itself was more of an accident. I don't know.

With complete disregard to humility, I guess it would have been a trifle boring to be like any one of them. Walking a beaten path.

But yes, I have paid the price for the way the things have turned out.

Say we have another get together in 10 years, I can kinda guess what each one of them will be still doing. But what about me. Is it so easy to guess outcomes or future where you are not involved. Is it that difficult that your judgement starts getting blurred as soon as you involve your own life into future projections.

Ameros Perros. 

Happy New Year 2011

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•  Somebody who interviewed me more than a year back said, he expected his start up to be successful and gross some 500 Cr by 2015. I said, Bullshit. I don't care how much sales will your start up do in 2015. My only measure of success of a start up is survival. If it survives till 2015, I would say it has been successful.

•  This blog has survived for about 5 years now. I don't remember the last endevour which I partook in, which kept me engaged that long on the same thing. They say my attention span is a fleeting function. They always do. Kisi Kshanbangur ki mahatvakanksha vyarth hai 
• I wanted to draw a normal function for the function of distribution of my posts vis-a-vis, a normal function with the same mean and standard deviation. If I aggregate all my published posts, Mean = 3.11, SD = 2.87. A normal function with those values is below, though I have screwed up the x axis part and hence the function does not peak at its mean. You can say it has been randomly x axis justified.  
• I was trying for a long time to figure out what exactly is on the y axis. Finally after a long research I rediscovered the Gaussian function. 
• Finally, like any work of statistics, this analysis hides more than it reveals. The total published posts are 165, while the total written posts are 199.